All My Loving

"Close your eyes and I'll kiss you,
Tomorrow I'll miss you;
Remember I'll always be true.
And then while I'm away,
I'll write home ev'ry day,
And I'll send all my loving to you."

Today I was sitting on a bus randomly listening to "All My Loving" from the movie Across the Universe. I suddenly asked myself, "isn't this the song the guy sings the girl from across the ocean while there's a montage of him cheating on her?" I remembered how I had used to really enjoy the song before seeing the movie, because I took all the words at face value, and I had a revelation.

I believe people. When they tell me things about themselves, I buy them. The best example of this is when they tell me they don't have romantic feelings for someone. I believe their words in spite of their actions. This post isn't meant to target anyone in particular, because this has happened to me several times. And the conclusion I have come to is that people don't know themselves, either. It would be hypocritical of me to complain about this, since I certainly don't understand myself, and I am a verbal processor to boot. But this realization makes it difficult to trust people. It almost seems stupid to do so when so often I get burned in the end, whether simply looking foolish in front of other, more intuitive mutual friends, or feelings of betrayal when people blatantly go against what they told me to my face and I chose to trust.

My question would be how do you know when to trust people and when to ignore what they repeatedly verbalize in face of stronger evidence... but I said "would be," because ultimately I have no question. There isn't an answer. Sometimes I will just be wrong, and that can't be predicted in advance.

But I think there might be inherent value to trusting, given that I'll make mistakes whether I favor trust or cynicism. At the end of The Magician's Nephew, there are talking animals, and they are very nice. But Uncle Andrew can't understand their words and just thinks they are making animal noises, and is afraid of them because he perceives them as violent brutes. This is because Uncle Andrew is a giant jerk. C.S. Lewis is careful to point out here that our personal character affects the way we see others and the assumptions we make about them.

Right now I can't speak for trusting in all circumstances. I still don't trust that all the money we give to beggars goes to a good cause, for example, and my students here lie to my face without breaking a sweat. But in the context of established friendships, I wonder whether believing the words people chose for you to hear-- hard though it may be, and even though you might ultimately be wrong to do so-- is beneficial enough that it's worth it to try. To fight the instinct to distrust everyone forever, just in case. (This instinct isn't unreasonable, after all. Most people in your life end up hurting you, maybe even a lot.) To stay pure of heart and let God defend you when people take advantage. Yet in the end, I just don't know.

[Lastly,

"I'll pretend that I'm kissing
the lips I am missing
And hope that my dreams will come true."

This is unrelated, but I have to complain about this line. In the context of cheating, it's particularly horrible. In my opinion you can't pretend to be kissing the lips you are missing unless you are actually kissing some other pair of lips. Otherwise you'd just be imagining it.]

Saturday

Last night I went to the ACP Good Friday service and was so tired I fell asleep during the organ solo in the middle (and immediately woke up when the sleeping relaxed my hands and I loudly dropped my program to the floor) and I wasn't really connecting to the Scripture being read, or the hymns we sang, but at the end all the lights went out (it was a tenebrae service btw) and there was only one candle lit in the whole room, the Christ candle. And I stared at it avidly, and suddenly I was completely present to the moment, and the weight of Easter sunk over me full force. "Light of the world, by darkness slain..." goes the song.* That line ran through my head again and again. I did not want that candle to go out. I did not want our only hope to be extinguished. We would be in utter, blackest darkness without him. With no hope of a coming morning.

Earlier I had been talking to Elena about how sometimes you have hopes, or even something you think is a promise or dream from God, and waiting for them/it to come about is just like holding your breath. This stereotypical expression is perfect to describe it. You hold your breath until you can't anymore, and instead of gasping, putting your head above the water, because you can't do that-- it's all water once you've jumped into the river with God-- you, well, you drown. Better put, that one part of you dies. It's as painful and strange as you would expect, learning to live with death inside. You wake up every morning, and remember that part of you is dead. Obviously it feels like a mistake. You think, "God is the author of life! What did I do? What happened here? He doesn't make mistakes, so I must have." But I don't think that's necessarily the case.

A few months ago, I heard a sermon on the life of Joseph. It was in French, which for me sometimes means that the message takes on delightfully fuzzy edges and the ideas I take away from it are more general. Not because I don't understand it, but I simply don't remember exact wording as well as I would English. The main takeaway for me from this sermon was that things that look like a mistake aren't necessarily one. Joseph being in jail, for example. Who would think that an honest man, righteous and walking close to God, would go to jail because he did the right thing? What sorts of thoughts did Joseph have as he woke up each morning for those couple years, as he "wasted his life," forgotten and alone, even presumed dead by the father who loved him? But he rose to great honor again, and it had all been part of the plan all along. He was in the perfect position to save all of Egypt (+ suburbs? what was Canaan?) from starvation.

Today, Saturday, is the perfect time to remember that I serve a God who raises people from the dead. A God who died. It must have seemed like the biggest mistake in history to anyone watching. Instead of a kingdom established for eternity, utter hopelessness. They thought he was a king who would reign forever, and instead he died and was buried. They had held their breath for his promises, perhaps half-doubting them all along --they sounded too good to be true-- and he died on them. How hollow the promises must have seemed then. What a Saturday.

If it wasn't a mistake even for Jesus to die, if that was actually the point, then we know that God does allow death. Not small setbacks or obstacles, but even real death to our dreams. He even let Lazarus die, and then said it was better that way. Because he is strong to save, and he resurrects. He takes great delight in resurrection. And frankly, that makes a better story and brings more honor to his name than a shallower alternative. It builds more faith in us.

Today, I am reminded that when I stand before impossible circumstances, there is nothing preventing God from a literal (or any other kind of) resurrection, because that is his thing. That is what he longs to do for his children, if they will only give him control by placing their trust in him. There is no circumstance dark enough that I need to be afraid.

Tomorrow, when the sun comes up over the Seine, I will be outside watching the light seep back into the world. I will sing, "...then bursting forth, in glorious day, up from the grave he rose again!" And I will  remember that even my dead dreams, the ones that seem too impossible for a positive outcome, are in the hands of a God that, out of an infinity of possibilities, chose dying and coming back to life as the best way to redeem all that he'd ever created.

-
*In Christ Alone... durrr. But we didn't get to sing that at this Friday service.

Songs I love but can't agree with, part one

[One of my favorite things is responding to songs as though they were one half of a conversation. I'm a little self-conscious because I know dumb pop songs are just dumb pop songs and supposedly they only pick the words because they rhyme. Maybe they are not meant to be taken that seriously. Nevertheless, I love this and am thus doing it anyway.]

Recently on a blog I keep up with there was a post called "I've been using music to amplify my toxic emotions." I got really excited when I saw the title, because I was like, "I think I do that too!" Unfortunately the post didn't live up to my expectations. I thought it was too general. And the author's way of using music isn't exactly the same as mine. But it probably doesn't matter whether we had the exact same emotions, or what songs overlapped with our negative emotions. I'm sure the outcome is quite similar, and unfortunately the solution too. What worked for her was wiping her iPod and starting from scratch with only music that creates positive thoughts. Ouch. I'll have to keep that idea on the back burner for a while until I can handle considering it. In the meantime, I am happy, delighted even, to critique songs I love (for the way they sound, and also in a guilty-pleasure-improv-character sort of way) but just cannot agree with.

Katy Perry has a place in my heart, even though I just deleted "I Kissed a Girl" from my iPod and iTunes because I realized how dumb that song is and how I am never just like, "man I want to listen to that song." The lyrics, even with gender aside, are all about kissing someone you don't even know, and that idea has honestly never appealed to me. (Also in this case they're drunk, which, if possible, makes it an even less inviting idea.) I was really sad when I learned that that awesome old black-and-white picture of a man dipping a woman into a kiss was between strangers. It no longer seemed as charming to me. So "I Kissed a Girl" was relatively easy to part with. I don't love it or agree with it.

But "The One That Got Away" is another story. It's super catchy. Sure the first verse is full of rascally behavior, but I consider high school to be distant enough past that it doesn't really matter. Well, tattoos are for life, but, moving on.. The chorus begins, "In another life/ I would be your girl/ we'd keep all our promises, it'd be us against the world." I can't argue with the factual nature of this, because it's another life so anything could happen, but I do think that this is sort of a dumb thing to think about, especially for this type of thing. We're not in another life, and continuing to repeat this particular speculation is more likely to hurt than to help anything, emotionally speaking.

The next part I have more of a problem with: "In another life/I would make you stay." I hate this line. You can't make someone stay, and if you could you wouldn't want to. This is like the whole epitome of why sin is possible and why the world is so f'ed up. God values free will highly enough that he allows us to make choices that hurt people, and hurt him. He invites us into love and freedom, but doesn't force it. Love is the opposite of making someone do something.

I am about to quote The Shack. Prepare your heart. In The Shack, Jesus says, "To force my will on you is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy." Thank you, Shack Jesus! Can you tell Katy Perry this, please?

Further, Jesus breaks all the locks and all the chains that bind us. This is something we cannot do, so this is always "his part." But we have a part, too. We have to walk out of the now-unlocked cages by ourselves. We have to stand up and dance until the chains fall off. If we can't do it right away, he waits. Super patiently. His arms are always open and they never get tired. But we have a choice to make that he can't and won't make for us. It's a partnership in this sense. [Oh, you want a concrete example of chains? He conquers the sin that other people have committed against us, breaking the hold it has on us, freeing us to forgive by his own victory and forgiveness. But we choose to forgive. He won't make us, and we yet we won't be free until we do forgive.] I say all this to emphasize that even Jesus doesn't make you stay (/make you do anything, technically). So it's stupid for anyone else to aspire to this. (Particularly if the only reason you give for this is "So I don't have to say you were the one that got away," which isn't even grammatically correct).

So Katy, or whoever actually wrote this song, in another life, you would not make him stay. You shouldn't want to. You should want him to be free, and happy. You can want him to pick you, but if he doesn't, he's not your man and you should respect that for both of your sakes.

I keep thinking of Terri or whatever Mr. Schuester's wife's name is in the first season of Glee. SPOILER ALERT.. for the first season, lol... she fakes a pregnancy to get him to stay with her selfish self. And guess what he does the second he learns the truth? That's right, he leaves. And he doesn't come back (at least not as far as I am in Glee, which isn't far, but I don't think he's planning on it, either). The things we could do to make people stay are not worth it. Honest, honest. And it doesn't work, usually. You can make someone stay physically without keeping them emotionally engaged. In fact, this is a likely outcome if you force someone to stay.

Back to "The One That Got Away." There's another verse, sort of clever but fluffy at the same time. Then she sings towards the end, "I should have told you what you meant to me," and this, I can get behind. This, rather than making someone stay, is actually a good thing to do a lot of the time. Then the other person can decide what they'll do about it, as a free being. So, ultimately she hits on a good idea. But she doesn't stick with it. She goes right back to that chorus. Twice.

A Guest Advent Reflection

This is another guest post. It's from The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey:

C.S. Lewis has written about God's plan, "The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear--a Jewish girl at her prayers." Today as I read the accounts of Jesus' birth I tremble to think of the fate of the world resting on the responses of two rural teenagers. How many times did Mary review the angel's words as she felt the Son of God kicking against the walls of her uterus? How many times did Joseph second-guess his own encounter with an angel--just a dream?--as he endured the hot shame of living among villagers who could plainly see the changing shape of his fiancee?

[...]

Nine months of awkward explanations, the lingering scent of scandal--it seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for his entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism. I am impressed that when the Son of God became a human being he played by the rules, harsh rules: small towns do not treat kindly young boys who grow up with questionable paternity.

Malcolm Muggeridge observed that in our day, with family-planning clinics offering convenient ways to correct "mistakes" that might disgrace a family name, "It is, in point of fact, extremely improbable that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. Mary's pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Ghost would have pointed to her need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a Savior more, perhaps, than any that has ever existed, would be too humane to allow one to be born."*

The virgin Mary, though, whose parenthood was unplanned, had a different response. She heard the angel out, pondered the repercussions, and replied, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." Often a word of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain, and in that matter-of-fact response Mary embraced both. She was the first person to accept Jesus on his own terms, regardless of the personal cost.**

from me, not Philip Yancey:

* I sure hope this guy is overstating the case a little bit, but I think he makes a good point even so. I would hope a mother has more control than to just let the baby be aborted without her consent, but either way Jesus would definitely be a prime candidate if you look at reasons people give, like "oh, that family is so poor the kid wouldn't have a good life anyway," and stuff. I agree that Mary's explanation would definitely get her into a psychiatric hospital, too, if most doctors heard it.

**Wow. I love the wording he chose. Accepting Jesus and God's plan (which are one and the same) always comes at a high personal cost, and it must always be on His terms, without compromise, but it's always worth it.

because I love the way you lie

...But you'll always be my hero

Even though you've lost your mind

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn

well that's alright because I like the way it hurts

just gonna stand there and hear me cry

well that's alright because I love the way you lie.

I love the way you lie.

I love the way you lie.

I've been listening to Skylar Grey's version of "Love the Way You Lie" over and over again. [You should grooveshark it--I couldn't find it on amazon or itunes.] It makes me sick, but I love it. Which, like, is totally the point of the song; I'm really getting the full experience. The original song is too harsh for me. There's a line where Eminem is something like, "and if she leaves again I'm going to tie her to the bed and set fire to the house." And he always sounds so angry anyway. So, it's a song about domestic abuse, shattered glass from fights, and how, "you always win, even when I'm right." He lies to her with "fables from his head." She sings that "it's sick that all these battles are what keeps me satisfied." (btw should it be "keep" instead of "keeps"? I can't decide if the verb refers to "all" or "the battles.")

We always love people who hurt us. Sometimes that makes us love them more. Maybe we feel brave and magnanimous for giving back love in the face of the pain they cause. I feel like there is no depth or height that we wouldn't go to, to excuse someone we want to excuse. At the beginning of the song, it goes, "Even angels have their wicked schemes, and you take that to new extremes," which is definitely comparing the abuser/liar to an angel, even if unfavorably.

This goes back to my idea that we decide in advance how we want to feel about someone, and view all of their actions in light of that, instead of evaluating each one independently (I think this is called the inductive approach, although it might really be the deductive). This ability allows us to continue to trust in God's character even when it seems like He doesn't care about us or has forgotten. It also allows us to forgive people that we don't understand (PTL) if we listen to their side of the story and hear in their own words why they did what they did. There are so many people I don't understand, but if I can just believe them that they meant well, we can get along, even if I was hurt before I knew their intent. Whether we should spend all our time with people we have to struggle to get at all is another issue, but at least we don't have to avoid them entirely if we're willing to listen.

"But you'll always be my hero/ Even though you've lost your mind" is so chilling to me. I don't feel this way about anyone, but I can so easily imagine it. I can picture wanting so badly to see someone a certain way (as a hero) that you overlook terrible, inappropriate, ill-thought-out behavior. This kind of thing is why someone felt like they had to author He's Just Not That Into You. Sometimes you would do better to look at a person's actual actions and use those to decide the kind of person they are, rather than listening to their self-assessment, which is, to say the least, biased. This can be especially true with a person you don't talk to regularly. That not-talking-ness might be a sign right there that they don't really care for you (not always, but maybe).

People are always telling you who they are, whether they mean to or not. You owe it to them, and to yourself, to listen.

Heart washing

We talked in my church a while ago about Proverbs 3:27, which is something like, "as a man thinks in his heart, so is he," and how what you believe defines your reality rather than the other way around.

Many people secretly fear everyone else is laughing at them silently, or just humoring them by being (or pretending to be) their friend. But fixing this problem won't come from researching ways to avoid ridicule, by being funnier or smarter or faster, but instead by acknowledging that if someone is laughing at you, that's really their decision, and deciding that you will not let real or imagined laughter determine your decisions in life. (Like in my last post: it's not in discovering an answer but in realizing the question needs some work).

In the first ever post of this blog, I said something about how human life is always physically messy. I found something in 1 Peter today that was awesomely related. 1 Peter 3:21 is about baptism: "and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also--not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience before God..." In this particular case, action is secondary to thought and intention. The action of cleaning oneself off is less important than the decision to think rightly (think cleanly/clearly?) about the world. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. If his body is dirty, but his mind is clean, he is clean.

I've been reading a fantastic book lately (when I have time). Spiritual Notes to Myself by Hugh Prather is like reading my own journal, except often with fresh thoughts I've never had. [side note: His simple statement that it's possible to gossip without malice was a pleasant epiphany for me.] Last night I read, "we spend all this time in the morning trying to look prepared--getting the hair right, the clothes right--but we leave home with our minds in disarray."

He talked about how "our physical appearance and outward behavior are everything to the ego, while the thoughts behind our actions are of little concern. Yet in reality, we dwell in our minds, not our actions [...] On a spiritual path, [...] form is secondary to content. So if I find myself preoccupied with the question of what to say or do, I am already caught up in the ego. Release the question and let God do the thinking. [...] There is no question about an action taken in peace." That might sound a little intense, but I am so with this guy when he says that. I buy it when people say our choices have to come from peace. That's a conversation for another time though. I hope the connection with inner/outer cleanness is obvious. Baptism is important as a representation of the state of the inner mind, not primarily as a physical washing. It's the invisible kind of getting ready in the morning.

Lungs

If you've listened to music by Florence and the Machine, you know that her songs tend to be unapologetically dark. My friend said to me recently, "I love how raw she is." Her music is so layered, and her melodies are so original and complex. I can't get enough of this music. Taking all the songs together, Lungs is absolutely one of the best albums I've ever heard in my life. The thing is, many or most of the songs are written in the second person and at some point send the message: "you are killing me [sometimes literally] but I love you anyway."

Job 13:15 came to mind. Pick your translation, but the message is "Though he slay me, yet I put my hope in him." Actually, The Message translation is "even if he killed me, I'd keep on hoping." This is even more intense. This is also 100% the kind of thing you might hear in the songs on the Lungs album.

I realized, and not for the first time, that love is giving the keys to your life and death to someone (or something?) besides yourself. It's not like tossing them a keyring while grinning, because you don't necessarily make this giving into a conscious choice, or experience pleasure from it. It's just what happens. It can be deliberate, but it's simply the natural result of caring all that much about another person.

When I say the keys to your life and death, it might literally refer to your body (I have an example of that in a second), or to the life/death of your heart, or that of your mind. I mean, really, the mind is the most obvious one, because a lot of what happens to your heart is experienced in the mind as an event. Caring about someone else's well-being is something that happens in your mind, and may even take up a lot of space there.

It's not a coincidence to this line of thinking that the first and most important commandment in all the law is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, passions, intellect, will, etc etc. It's not a coincidence that there has never been a more perfect love than that between the Father and the Son, and yet the Son was sent to die. Jesus allowed humanity to kill him because he loved them so much.

This message that relates love and death seems completely insane and morbid and unhealthy from some standpoints, but I submit that rather than an ideal pattern for how to love the best in the best of all possible worlds, it seems to be an inevitable result of life here below that will be observed by anyone who's looking. If I've learned anything lately, it's been that no part of human life is pure. To interact with humanity is to get blood, tears, saliva, sweat, and worse on your hands (and maybe all over). Loving a real live person is being okay with whatever mess they throw at you, and separating your response to the mess from your response to the eternal being who effected the mess. (Which can mean anything. Sometimes the most loving response to a person is to step back.)

.

Comparing the love that the author of the songs was writing about to the love that the Father has for his children is of course completely figurative, a simile that must not be extended too far, but it's worth considering that love is love is love, (add the word "true" or "real" before each of those), wherever we find it, whatever muck we have to dig through for the treasure.