Creation (My Clay Woman)

I spent last week at Taize, in silence. The week contained a lot of unexpected things for me. For example, I expected some big revelation, about really anything at all, but it never came. [Rather, one sort of came, but then was later swept away by a giant wave of doubt, leaving me in the same place as ever, but this time a little, just barely, one breath, more at peace. This is how things often are? God knows what he's doing?]

One of the things I did not expect to learn about was creation. I would have expected to learn mostly about Jesus' time on earth: each day we were given a few "gospel situations" or other Scripture to meditate on. (One was from the Book of Wisdom! Guys, that's not even in my Bible...) I tried to play along, especially the first few days, but the last few days' "assigned" texts didn't speak to me at all, because we were supposed to dig into the emotion in them, and I didn't have any. So I admit: I cheated on my gospel situations with my regular Bible reading plan. I was doing this little by little since Tuesday. Don't tell Sister Dominique.

And let me tell you, my regular Bible reading plan was good to me. Words jumped off the page and danced in my eyes, elevating my heart rate and making me laugh. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters, even though there was no light by which this concept might have been made visual. Music from nowhere poured into my ears (okay, loosely based on that Moby song*) as I tried to conceptualize what was before all things. I read about God breathing the spirit of life into humans and I stopped reading for five minutes to stare at my hand and marvel at God's detail. And this is the back story of why I was so impressed:

At the beginning of the week Sister Dominique gave us some tips for how to structure (or not structure) our silent days. One of the resources available to us was this outdoor shack full of clay we could play with. She advised that we should just enjoy seeing the "empreintes, how do you say empreintes?" "marks? fingerprints?" that our fingers made in the clay. In her words, "...you had the pleasure of touching clay-- you don't have to make something who look like something."

But because I had five hours of free time to kill, and because I was inspired by clay creations left behind by past silent pilgrims,** I did want to "make something who look like something." I wanted to make a woman. She was going to be the best woman ever. Before I even began to create my woman, I began to be possessive of her, and fond of her. The lump of clay I chose to bring with me already had taken shape in my mind, I just needed to make a few tweaks and she would be perfect. I carried the lump with me to a moss-covered stone wall overlooking a beautiful stretch of farms and villages. I broke it into a few pieces to loosely ration out different body parts and got to work.

I soon learned that clay cracks like crazy on a hot sunny day. Even if you shield it from the sun with your own body. This would not do. Back to the shack. I returned to my spot with a red plastic bowl with a little water in it. Now creation was new. If I dipped a few fingers in water, suddenly the whole surface of the clay glided and flowed. This was easier, and funner. More satisfying. And unexpectedly, more emotional. I have heard so many times this idea that God is the potter and we are the clay.. for good reason, it's in the Bible.. and that we are marked with his very fingerprints. But never had I ever once considered this concept of what creating us does to God. That what we are made of gets all over his hands.

I spent over an hour on my woman. I didn't get that far. I was astonished how much work went into her. Also how many of the modifications I made for practical reasons also naturally made her look more realistic. Largely in the stomach/torso area. Also her one thigh I made. At one time I was running out of torso clay and I had to make her chest smaller. I thought apologetically, "Your creator loves you very much, but not enough to walk practically all the way back to the house for some boob clay." And, do you, reader, have any idea how much work goes into shaping a pair of breasts? It is WAY harder than I would have ever imagined. No matter what I did they looked terrible, and/or fake. I didn't know what else to try.

I know this sounds flippant, but I am serious when I tell you that this experience gave me more respect for God's handiwork. Not just breasts (I'm still being serious here) but all kinds of things that we have. When I was reading Genesis later and staring at my hands as I mentioned earlier, it was because how the heck would I have ever given my woman fingernails? Much less those tiny tiny little triangles on the skin of backs of hands. And even if I had made her technically perfect (to my specifications), no matter how well I did, I could never lean down and breathe the spirit of life into her like God did with Adam. How amazing is that! Gosh.

After my brush with creation, I felt sure that God is way more careful with creating us than I thought. I believe he purposely makes each human that has ever existed, but even if he had only made Adam and Eve and set them in motion, that would be enough to impress me. And God is never too lazy to go back for more clay if he wants to make you a certain way. And furthermore, if my personal attachment to that chunk of clay is any indicator at all, God loves you very deeply while he is creating you, and smiles to himself often about how great you are going to be, delights in it, gets lost in thinking about it.

Well, I ended up smashing my woman. I am just a fickle human creator, not God. She had a head, but no face or hair. She had one upper arm, one thigh, and a torso that was kickin' from the back but not so great from the front. I could not do her justice, and I knew it. Also the back of my neck was getting hot. I thought if I had time in the week I might revisit her, but I am glad now that I smushed her because it would be too sad for her to have dried into that pitiable condition forever.

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*Look up "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" by Moby and give it a listen. Please? You will not regret it.
**This is a metaphor.. don't picture the Puritans with the big buckles on their shoes and hats...

God-wrestler

I think the first time I learned and retained that "Israel" means "God-wrestler" (I've also heard: "he struggles with God") was my senior year of college. I really didn't like it. I complained to Jeremy at the train station (because I learned the weekend of improv regionals) that God and Israel are supposed to be spouses! Not wrestle each other. Yucky. I hate wrestling. (I do struggle with God sometimes, but again, that doesn't sound like a good thing.)

When I was reading Prayer by Philip Yancey he said some of the people in the Bible who were most richly rewarded were those who bargained with God and got in His face about stuff. God frequently is petitioned and shows even more mercy than He was going to. Yancey (paraphrase) writes that He likes when we ask because it can unleash more mercy on earth. Obviously I can see how this is so in the case of Abraham asking to spare those cities if fewer and fewer righteous people can be found (Genesis 18:16-33 if you forgot). Yancey asks: "Abraham stopped asking; would God have spared the cities for just one person?" Also there's that story in Luke 18:1-8 about the widow who won't stop bothering the judge until he gives her the justice she asks for. My TNIV Luke 18:1 says "Jesus told [this] parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up." And there are plenty of others in the Bible too.

Yancey also mentions his relationships with the people closest to him in life, like his brother, his wife, and his editor. About them he says "with each of these people, my intimate partners, I act in a way reminiscent of the bargaining scenes with God. I make suggestions, back off, accommodate their point of view, reach a compromise and come away changed."

Obviously I think it's possible to argue/fight/wrestle someone without love, but maybe there's significance in the fact that they can be done with love, too, and it might be a sign of love to be willing to. It can be really really hard to bring up some things with people, and most of us aren't willing to talk about tough stuff with those we don't know too well. Some aren't even willing to bring them up with friends. But like Yancey says, challenge changes us.

There was also a part I read and was disgusted by. Yancey talks about wrestling his brother in the dark when they were both little kids. And I am paraphrasing this, but he said it was a lot like making love, because you grapple back and forth, using up your energy against each other, body on body, then fall back, spent. I was like, "hello, incest!" but the image has stuck with me for months now. Perhaps because he's right that wrestling indicates a certain closeness. That's why it's far more blessed to wrestle with God than to simply be far away from Him. Sometimes literally.. Jacob receives God's blessing (after having to ask for it) when the wrestling is over in Genesis 32:26-29.

Maybe this is part of the key to the spousal relationship between Israel and God. Maybe a marriage is a promise to keep wrestling and not just peace out when hard stuff comes up, because something of deep value is gained through the back-and-forth of an honest, loving challenge. And maybe that something is the experience of turning into the strong and selfless person you were created to be in the arms of the one you love best.

Cain and Abel used to bother me.

Yesterday in church I realized it bugged me that God seemed to accept Abel and reject Cain. Doesn't Acts 10:34-35 tell us that he's "no respecter of persons" (depending on your translation)? Doesn't 1 Peter 1:17 say the Father judges impartially, and are we not instructed to imitate God by doing "nothing out of favoritism" in 1 Timothy 5:21? And in James 3:17 the wisdom that comes from heaven is lots of things, and one of them is impartial.

But before I had even had time to think of those (I mean, who needs references to know God is fair, right?) I realized that I was overlooking part of the story. Genesis 4:4-5 says, "The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor." Not just Abel and Cain themselves. So Cain gets mad and sad (my paraphrase of Genesis 4:5b) and God, being a considerate person, asks him why. "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?"

I admit there's a lot going on in the original story that I don't understand, because I don't know if there's some significance to the difference between offering animals and plants (one has blood and includes death?) and I know that Abel kept flocks for a living, and Cain grew stuff, so what does that say about 2 Corinthians 8:12 "For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have"? But I think I know the answer already. It specifies right in the passage, "if the willingness is there."

The reading of the Cain and Abel story that does not bother me is as follows: Cain's and Abel's offerings have modern-day parallels that I can understand. Another word for offering in this case will be sacrifice. Modern-day sacrifices include all sorts of things. Like:

- sacrificing your right to speak up and defend yourself all the time (Jesus set us an example of this in 1 Peter 2:23, and it is every bit as relevant today as ever);

- sacrificing whatever amount of time you set aside daily for prayer, listening to God and reading Scripture;

- sacrificing watching movies or TV or listening to music that feels really good but also sort of tears apart your soul a little bit by setting a bad example (okay, I am referring to Gossip Girl);

- sacrificing the unlimited free music you could be having by choosing to pay out of respect for musicians;

- sacrificing your American Dream to pursue something less glam and impressive for Jesus' sake and the sake of the broken (example: doing that thing where you put a cap on your earnings and give the rest away);

- sacrificing a tenth of your dinero to give to church;

- sacrificing making out too much or at the wrong time in the interest of purity and showing you trust God that He's better than making out out of season.

and.. the examples are probably infinite, but those are what I came up with on the spot. If you were wondering, the making out one is my favorite example, lol. And I'd consider those to all be pretty good sacrifices. Sacrifices that are supernaturally motivated when you decide you want to honor God and ask Him for the strength to make them. I realize there are way bigger things to give up, and also way smaller. But I think the listed examples all require faith that there's more to life than what we can see. Hebrews 11:4 says that, "By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did." So I can believe that in my modern-day parallel story, Abel's sacrifice, his offering, was something like one of those or better. And as for Cain, well, his offering was probably more like the day you forgot to bring lunch with you and there's nowhere you can buy it so you realize halfway through being hungry that technically it could probably be referred to as a fast, and that's what you offer. Cain's sacrifice was probably like giving your last leftovers to God instead of the firstfruits He both wants and deserves way more than you, anyway. It doesn't take faith, because you didn't really do anything differently in your life because of it.

Frankly, I often have trouble with the binaries, or lack thereof, in the world. It's far easier to understand life in black and white. But God is a person, and like any person, doesn't fit into any kind of formula or predictability. So it's His divine right (and in this case, who could blame Him anyway?) to look favorably upon some offerings and not upon others. Some offerings are better, some come from a deeper place in the heart and thus contain more of us. More of our will, because they reflect more of the giver's intention (if I didn't already tell you, I think will and intention are the deepest part of someone's being). To use a dumb example, think of the difference between someone giving you store-bought cookies and home-baked ones. Sure, they are both cookies. And even if they taste the same (I think we all know the home-baked ones would be better in a non-hypothetical situation), heck, even if the home ones are worse, you will probably look more favorably on the ones that someone took time to plan and bake for you, which they did not have to do (evidenced by the fact that there is such a thing as store-bought cookies).

The rough part for me is that I can easily imagine myself in Cain's place: someone else totally spends more time with God, and I am jealous that they seem to be receiving more from Him. Well, should I be surprised by this? If I gave up what they have to pursue Jesus, would I not receive the riches I see them with?

Lastly, there's a verse somewhere (thought it was in James or Corinthians, but couldn't find it, and Google didn't help at all) about how we kill people or are mean to them or something not because of how bad they are, but how bad we are (awful, awful paraphrase I know). And this seemed relevant, and I would've added it if I could've.