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...

If you are not too long...

...I will wait here for you all my life. -Oscar Wilde

[source]

Today an episode of Futurama made me cry. I thought that I was just being extra sensitive lately (yesterday I burst into tears five separate times) but in fact that was not necessarily the case today, as I am about to prove. I wanted to find a picture for this post, and when I began my search I was surprised how much Google Instant filled in for me; I clearly wasn’t the first to look for it. I came across the episode’s Wikipedia page and saw that a critic described the ending as, “one of the saddest endings to a television program that I have ever seen.” A TV critic. I’d assume this man has seen his fair share of television programs, and of sad endings. So that made me feel better, but what really clinched it was the enormous amount of commenters on some site (and also below the youtube video) talking about how this made them cry, even though many of them said they weren’t the crying type, or hadn’t cried in five years or whatever. So in this particular case, it’s definitely not just me.

SPOILER ALERT, I’m going to ruin this 2002 episode of Futurama. I don’t feel that bad about it because the rest of the episode wasn’t that great (my overall personal take on this show is that it’s very hit or miss, but mostly miss) and it’s not like you were planning to see it anyway.

So, for necessary background, the character Fry was living in New York in 1999 when on New Year’s Eve of that year he accidentally fell into a thing (a freezer? A time machine? Who cares) that sent him to the year 3000, where he made new friends, etc. Life in the year 3000 is the show’s basic premise. In this particular episode (it’s called “Jurassic Bark”—very classy) Fry and his self-centered robot best friend visit a museum exhibit that happens to be of the pizza place where Fry was working in 1999. They see a few artifacts Fry recognizes, and then a gray dog-shaped fossil. Fry gasps when he realizes who this is: his loyal dog, Seymour, who was his best friend at the time he was suddenly sent to the future with no warning. Through flashbacks you see how close the two of them were. Examples: after rescuing the dog from starvation, Fry says something like, "you're nice, you don't judge me like other dogs do," (my translation from French) and they have a song they sing/bark together.

Bref, I mean, anyway, Fry's doctor friend says he can clone the dog, and that they can even restore his personality, and even his memory to the moment that he died. Fry is SO excited about this idea and buys his dog a collar and a bed and everything in preparation. The robot gets jealous of the attention (and the collar) and throws the fossil in lava, but then rescues it, this just serves to heighten the suspense, and then the moment of truth arrives and they begin the cloning process. First they see that Seymour was age 15 when he died. When Fry sees this, he decides not to go through with it, reasoning that he knew Seymour when he was three, so the dog had had 12 years to move on, find a different master, live a full life. He says, "surely he's forgotten all about me." This is sort of a touching/selfless idea, and who would want to be resurrected old?

It seems like the end of the episode. But then there's one more flashback. Seymour never moved on at all. He sat outside the pizza place every day for twelve years, in all kinds of weather, a fact made most poignant when you see the pizza chef grow old, with white hair, and the pizza place close and get boarded up. He waited for Fry for the rest of his life at the place they last saw each other. Finally Seymour lies down, just once, and closes his eyes and the episode ends. I'm tearing up just typing about it. (It's very findable on youtube but I don't think it would be as good without the more detailed backstory provided by the episode).

I think the idea that really got me was that after all, Seymour would have LOVED to see Fry. Even if it were just for a little while before he would die again, even just one moment. That would have made his life complete in a sense. Yet Fry didn't give him this chance because he was trying to be nice, because he didn't know any better.

When I (and/or others) have a really strong emotional reaction to something, I try to find some sort of way that the emotion-triggering-thing can relate to universal ideas, and/or to God.

In my opinion, a surefire trigger (if done well, of course) is this idea of two ships passing. Sometimes it's two people who physically occupy the same space, but in Grey's Anatomy and The Golden Compass it can also be people who are in a physical space that overlaps but that is spiritually a different/alternate dimension and thus at least one of the people has no way to see, hear, or feel the other person, though they might somehow sense their presence, a little, for a moment.

"All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people," -Isaiah 65:2a

I don't see God as a stray dog who waits for us outside a pizza place. Honest, I don't. But if this animated rescued-stray dog's 12 year waiting made me cry, then how much more powerful is it when God waits for us? Waits for we who were created to wait on him. He waits with open arms for his children to turn to him, and many of them never sense this. They never see that in their very own universe (not even an alternate one!) Someone holds out their hands, hoping for a response. I don't have an extremely clear picture of my theological beliefs in this area as regards every human who has ever lived, but I will say confidently that, at least some of the time, God waits for us, eager to share life with us. And his patience and forbearance are beyond all measurement or compare.

If we only knew how attentive God is towards us, even when we do not sense him at all. If we only saw all the ways he blesses us that we're not even aware of. "The Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!" (Isaiah 30:18)

I think these words are at the heart of the emotion for me: "If you only knew!" Someone could be praying for you right now, asking God for exactly that thing you need. You could be showing hospitality to an angel (Hebrews 13:2, lol). You could be days away from your next big break. Someone could be writing you a letter, or something could already be in the mail for you. Someone across the world, your next best friend, could be making the decision about what they'll do next in life, that will bring them into your neighborhood.

A closing thought. At prayer meeting tonight, our pastor mentioned that reading the Bible all the way through is something that should be completed by at least 1-3 years after someone gives their life to Christ. He's right, and I am not in any way denying that. But 1-3 years? How patient God is. I think the length of the Bible shows it as much as anything. God doesn't expect us to read the entire Bible in one day. Nor does he ask us to panic about it if we haven't finished yet. It's not about being finished reading the Bible, it's about reading the Bible every day. God just doesn't see time as we do: "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but wanting everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:8-9)

God, thank you for allowing me to glimpse your truth and the beauty of faithfulness today through a scruffy cartoon dog.

God doesn't expect us to be good

I think it's self-evident that humanity is inherently evil, but if you are not convinced, here is a Dino Comic as evidence:

Now that that's established, I want to respond to some thoughts I heard in a class lecture by some dude named Bob Hamp.* By respond I mostly mean summarize so you don't have to listen to all hour and twenty minutes of it, and maybe add a few of my ideas.

To set the stage for his message, he refers to Scripture that comes soon after John 3:16. He uses the NASB, which might be why I had never heard it put this way before. He asks his class to fill in the blank in this: ²⁰ For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But he who practices _______ comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

"He who does evil hates the light [...] but he who practices ______ comes to the light."

What should go in the blank? a) truth  b) good  c) righteousness

Me, I said good.

I fell into his trap.

The correct answer is "he who practices the truth comes to the light." Mr. Hamp (I don't even know this guy, I feel weird using his name) says that in human economy, the opposite of evil is good, but in God's economy, the opposite of evil is truth.

Thus, he continues, when God tells us our righteousness is like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6), he's not saying it to make us feel crummy, but to give us a realistic diagnosis so he can give us a realistic course of treatment.

He points out that when someone says they are a good person, they are only comparing themself within the human race, like "not as bad as Hitler, not as good as Mother Teresa," but since all humanity is sinful, it's nothing to be proud of even to come out at the very top of that spectrum. And, he concludes, if there's no good in you, and you try to do good, the best you can do is a good version of evil.

Hamp says relatively early on that Scripture doesn't give us a list of rules to follow but a blueprint of how reality functions. Thus, despite our human conclusion that the way to fix evil is to do good, the real solution is not to do good but to come to the light. When we come to the light, God begins to expose what is not him, and reveal what is him, and then life starts to work. What I say about this is that not only does God reveal our hearts at this time, but he actually changes them. I tend to believe that becoming aware of something instantly changes it in all sorts of cases, and I especially think so in this case.

Hamp says what God wants of us isn't that we be good, but that we practice the truth. He says Adam originally didn't have an awareness of good and evil before he ate from the tree, and he goes so far as to say (admitting that it's not supported by Scripture) that Adam even could have done some bad stuff before the fall without knowing it, because he didn't have the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but that it wouldn't matter if he did, because he was living so closely with God.

So once Adam and Eve had sinned, they hid from God, choosing hiddenness over light and truth (hey just like in John 3:20!) Hamp says, "I wish I could go back and tell him, there is no good reason to hide. Hiding is death."

Okay, so basically all of that has been that guy's thoughts. Now for a few of mine. I find it fascinating that I still can fear God's judgment or disapproval even after reading about how he forgives and heals even the deepest and most entrenched and disgusting sins. After reading all the Scripture about how God sees us as beloved children. Yet that fear creeps in, and I admit there are plenty of things about myself I would not want God to know about or see, if I could control it.

But I think maybe the best advice I ever read about making those tough choices about behavior that may or may not be a sin, you're not sure, was this: do not let anything hinder your connection with God. If you don't find yourself able to stop a sin pattern, at least do not add hiding from God to your list of problems. God is not going to be shocked, because he's heard worse, and you can't really hide things anyway, only refuse to discuss them with him. And discussing them with him is the most giant step you can take in the best direction. You can't conquer sin on your own. Trying to suppress your sin nature is like trying to hold a lid down on a pot that wants to boil over. Ouch! And also you're going to fail miserably. To extend this slightly odd metaphor further, God is the one (one as in, only one) that can lower the flame, so ask him about it!

One last thing. I think a few verses in Luke illustrate how God responds to our honest, unhidden hearts, and that moment when we see the truth/see the light.

In Luke 5:4-11 Simon Peter lowers his nets because Jesus tells him to, even though he'd been fishing all night with no success.When two boats are filled with fish, Simon falls to his knees and says, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" Whether or not that seems like a random comment in that context,** I think it reflects our natural response to our sin-- hiding from God, distancing ourselves from him. Instead of crying out, "Go away from us, Lord!" Adam and Eve just hid instead. But Jesus, instead of being like, "Okay Simon, you're right, catch ya later," he says, "Don't be afraid, from now on you will fish for people," or put another way, he entrusts him with a super important task whereby saying, "I want you for my team." He sees the worth in Simon. It was Simon's right view of things that unlocked this response.

So: we can't do good, but what God asks from us instead is for us to come to him and see the truth and live out the truth [live out= acknowledge in all our ways]. Once we do that, God takes care of the goodness. All the goodness is his anyway.

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*It's a sermon I heard here: http://gatewaypeople.com/ministries/freedom-kairos/media1 almost at the very bottom of the page, it's called "The Hidden Heart." I think it starts mid-sentence and talking about something random, just go with it.

**It does to me. Maybe someday it won't. I love how the Bible can be a gift you keep unwrapping.

God's Day Planner

I always feel like you have to pick between God who wants to bless YOU and God who wants YOU to bless EVERYONE ELSE. For blessings, some Jesus-followers tend to make much of things like, "Thank you God that I got to eat pumpkin pie today and it was a nice surprise," and in a way this feels almost shallow, or even too good to be true. I realize that God blessing you and you blessing others are not mutually exclusive, and neither takes priority, I suppose, though that sometimes seems impossible. But the truth is, God really does want to bless you, and he gives gifts of all sizes. Just because he likes you. And loves you.

This picture I've posted made me cry big surprise tears one night as I was rushing through this French comic book* so I could return it to the family that loaned it to me. It's a robot reading the day planner of his creator. I will (loosely) translate it for you. Whenever it says Robi, trade it for your own name, and when it says Sakapus, insert the name of your pet.

Monday the 19th

-Try to talk to Robi in a dream.

-Shine a ray of sun in his room and send a bird to his window to make his heart rejoice.

-Give Sarkapus an urgent need so Robi meets someone awesome instead of staying inside all day.

-Organize a meeting between Robi and someone who knows my address. (Lack of available staff!)

-Allow a circumstance that helps Robi learn to always look on the bright side.

-Save Robi's life. (Discretely.) [Accompanied by a picture of a bus almost hitting him.]

-Give him a nice moment with a friend from work that will turn into a great memory.

-Visit him inconspicuously.

Tuesday the 20th

Robi needs sleep!

-Instead of the sun and bird this time, inspire the neighbor to sing funny to cheer Robi up.

-Move the box Adeline forgot on the stairs so Robi doesn't fall.

-Inspire a phone call from a friend to restore his morale.

-Write to Robi.

-Find Robi a wife who really loves him. (Roba?)

-Keep him from meeting Pat, a bad influence; block the way.

-Make sure his book is where he'll easily find it.

Man, and this is just a made-up comic book. And those are not even that many things. What if in real life God has hundreds of things in mind for us each day? Bet you he does. :o)

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*The French are the biggest comic-book readers after the Japanese. In a huge bookstore on the busy, centrally-located Boulevard St. Michel in Paris, the entire entry-level floor is dedicated to comic books. Yes, there's a fair amount of manga. The Japanese are the biggest, after all.