Monthly Archives: February 2010

February 16, 2010 · 7:10 am

Impressions on a Fat Tuesday

Roy Orbison sings “Pretty Woman” as the man by the window, white earplugs delivering his preferred white noise, ruffles the paper, sets it down, and stands up to leave, almost as if he can feel me observing, writing about him.   A buddy and he walk out the door, into the rain, calling back over their shoulders “Have a nice day.”   Iris cranks out the coffee from the grinder, the clicking cracking the quiet of the coffee shop.   Water falls in straight lines through the light, and cars whoosh by, the street busy with early morning souls hurrying toward wherever early morning souls hurry toward.    I am not content, but I’m close.   4:45 the alarm strummed me awake, and the workout was simple, even easy.   Odd thing though, I didn’t drink anything–not a drop–until after the workout, after the shower, after the kiss goodbye to my wife, after the trip to the coffee shop, after the latte was poured, the thick foam carved into the leaf shape hovering for a brief moment on the top of the cup.   Then I drank.   Thankfully, the coffee was hot enough.

I am not content, but I’m close.

I am frightened.   A little, at least, because of a situation in my family that I’m unsure how to insert myself into, or even if I should.   I am thrilled.  I’m acting again, last night being the first rehearsal of the next play at what I think of as my home theatre.   I am hopeful.   Plans for the next ten years are clarifying, and though I know there are no guarantees, the fact that any shape at all is observable I take as a blessing, an arrival of a guide.   (I say arrival…He’s never gone.)  I am proud.   Both good and bad, this one–so I’ve got children I can barely think of, I love them so much.   Then again, the pride thing is my back being up, being offended, thinking I’m something I’m not, having a hard time saying “sorry”, even though I’ve said it a zillion times in my years.  I am grateful.   I won’t even begin to list.   My thanks likes lists, and I haven’t time for the full boggling of the mind that comes with that sort of inventory.   Begin with material, end with the invisible, sandwich them with cosmos large and small, quantum and Newtonian, and wrap it family and whatever bits of love you can wrap your head around.   I am in love.   I blew a kiss to the girl who has my heart as we drove cars in opposite directions in the pre-dawn rain.   She is light that refuses to be extinguished, much like the Lord we both look to.   I am tempted.   It’s Fat Tuesday after all…what’s a little indulgence like the rest of the world?  Lent comes tomorrow, and it’ll be time to bow the head anew, reflect again on the loss and the sacrifice and the regret.   Confession is good for the soul.  Should I do a thing today I’ll have to confess tomorrow, knowing God will forgive?   As Paul said, “Dumb idea.”   (My translation.)

Here comes the light, here comes the day.  How do you plan worship?  How do you plan to be surprised by the greatness of God so much so that you have to sing about it?   Who knows, but that’s my task today.   And we ministers will pray, and I’ll meet with people over more and more coffee, and I’ll memorize lines, and imagine two guys named Grant and a guy named Lee slugging it out over a long ago war.   I’ll grade a couple of papers if I have time, all of it before doing the table work with a director and the other actors of the play that will be part of my Lenten practice for 2010.   I’ll miss things.   I’ll discover something big, a small thought, like I did yesterday (not ready to say what it is.)  I’ll sleep, or I won’t, and I’ll think of whether I built the day on rock or sand.   Did I judge?  Did I let my yes be yes?   Did I lay up a treasure here, or perhaps in a higher place?   (Is Heaven really “up?”) I’ll hurry, I’ll work hard, I’ll slough off at least one thing, and I’ll torture myself over some bit of incompetence I’ll be sure someone will notice.   I’ll do better and worse than yesterday and tomorrow all at the same time.

Here we go.

I have nothing to say, really, but words arrive anyway, appearing ready for service, and I write them down, trusting that something will emerge.

On Sundays, I forgo Lenten practice because always, the Christ rises on Sunday.   I cannot fast as resurrection happens all over again.   As the tradition holds, feasting trumps fasting on the Son’s day.

Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner…

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February 15, 2010 · 8:05 am

The Last Station

What is love?

It’s an appropriate question to encounter on the day before Valentine’s Day, and Saturday afternoon, the question appeared with force in Michael Hoffman’s film, The Last Station, starring Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, and Paul Giamatti.   (Spoilers ahead.)    The Last Station chronicles the last tumultuous days of the relationship between the famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (Plummer) and his wife Sofya (Mirren) as seen through the eyes of one of Tolstoy’s young disciples, Valentin Bulgakov (McAvoy).   (Note: Reading Russian novels and plays has never been easy — all those names and variations on names.)   Plummer is astounding as the aging prophet of the people, quietly powerful, occasionally rising to match the bluster and force of Mirren’s Sofya.    Mirren’s work is seamless, bringing this tortured woman to life with nuance and swift emotional currents that turn quickly according to Sofya’s need and strategy.   Valentin’s adoration of Tolstoy and the ideals of love, chastity, purity, and egalitarianism are etched beautifully by McAvoy,  his face shining is awe as he meets Tolstoy for the first time.   McAvoy plays Valentin’s transformation pitch perfect as he sees first hand the paradoxes of ideals meeting harsher realities, even in the lives of those who dream the ideals.   When he writes to his lover Masha at the end of the film, calling her to join him as Tolstoy battles for his life, he says simply, “Heart breaking.”  The beauty of it is that this is no revelation, but simply the statement of what McAvoy has been gradually experiencing throughout.

At issue is a will that substantially impacts the future of Tolstoy’s family.   Giamatti plays Vladimir Chertkov, Tolstoy’s secretary, and one of the fiercest adherents to a kind of new religion, or social doctrine, based on Tolstoy’s beliefs and writings.    Chertkov leads the “Tolstoyans” in a fight to have Tolstoy will the copyrights to his writings to the public, effectively robbing Sofya and Tolstoy’s children of an immense fortune.   Both Chertkov and Sofya appeal to Tolstoy on the basis of “love.”    The film pits the ideals of Christ’s love for all of humanity, and the demands of that love on behalf of social justice, against the demands and responsibilities of familial love.   Who do we care for first and foremost?   Our families, providing them with a level of comfort and prosperity that may or may not be needed?   Or the poor and the disenfranchised, perhaps creating a situation far less comfortable for our families?

What does Christ’s love demand?

Tolstoy makes his choice, and it is almost more than he can bear.   It is certainly more than Sofya can bear, and we see the shattering of individual lives even as perhaps thousands unseen are…saved?   Personal sacrifice for the greater good perhaps, but it’s hard (and beautiful) to watch these titans clash and ultimately lose (and yet not) their love.   The beauty and power of The Last Station is that it holds onto the private and social paradoxes desperately, refusing to fall into easy choices and preachy platitudes.   This is life at its messiest.   And perhaps its truest.

So glad I saw it…

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February 10, 2010 · 7:25 am

Grace and Work

Peter Block, in The Answer to How is Yes, makes a simple pair of statements.  “…it is never efficient or inexpensive to act on our values.  There is no such thing as cheap grace.”

Chris Goldman attributes the theology of grace to Paul, pushing back against Paul’s naysayers, asserting that without him, our understanding of grace would be far smaller.  This makes sense when you think about much of what Jesus had to say.   Take Matthew 25: it is full of works-based theology.  If you trim your lamps and keep plenty of oil, you get into the wedding.  If you don’t trim the lamps and don’t keep enough oil, you miss the wedding.   If you do good things with what you’re given (the story of the talents), you get rewarded.  If you bury what you’ve been given, you get thrown outside into the dark place where people weep and gnash their teeth.   And lastly, Jesus seems to say pretty plainly, whether or not you get to take part in the life of God eternally depends on whether you fed the poor, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited those in prison.

Yes, I know there’s more to it than that, but if you’d been listening to Jesus when he delivered Matthew 25, grace as we understand it might not have entered your mind.

I’m intrigued by this relationship, the one between grace and work.  Grace is a gift; work makes worlds.  Grace is unmerited favor; work guarantees nothing.   We are saved by grace through faith; we are God’s workmanship, created for good works.  God has been working since the beginning, Jesus said, adding that he was working right alongside.

A friend and I sometimes spar over what active agency we have.   My friend is fond of saying “We can do nothing.  It’s all God.”   I argue, saying, “No, we are free, and we have choices and must take action.”   When he says “It’s all God” I know what he means, and as far as the metaphor goes, I agree.   But the metaphor taken too far makes us out to be inanimate, puppets, our will an illusion.  (Which many people believe it to be.)  Even to pray “Help me” assumes it is “I” who has to get up and do the work, even as God lends a hand.

There is work in accepting grace.  And we could say, grace works.

My suggestion is this: life lived “abundantly” (someone unpack that word for me) requires grace and work in equal part.   Grace and work are married, and to divorce them in order to understand “the how” of God’s heavenly ticketing service is to invite chaos and needless theological wars.   Willard’s point that grace is opposed to earning, but not to effort, is part of what I’m after here, but I’m also pushing back against the transactional “how to” question of getting to heaven.  Not that I don’t want to go, and want everyone else to go, too, but the with-God life is the point, and that life is both now and forever, built both in essence and quality by the siblings grace and work.

By God’s grace, off to work…

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February 9, 2010 · 7:28 am

Another Thanks

Every once in awhile, I am reminded to be grateful.  In the midst of devastating earthquakes,  the loss of children, the despair of loved ones, and the slow slipping away of life and vitality that waits for all of us, there is still so much of life.   It is all grace to begin with, from our unexpected and unasked-for birth, through our blink-of-an-eye youth and the long middle years of responsibility, all the way to the last slow walk to the deathbed.    Perhaps it’s a good idea to let a bit of our lives “flash before our eyes” before we face a moment of impending death.

For the early life, being born into a family that believed in God and the story of the Christ so hidden for all those centuries.  For the strands of history held up by small moments lived out by faithful and pressured members of generations past, each of them not realizing how the simple choice here and there would change everything for me and my children.   For the few days of tennis with my Dad, which I recalled in Leaving Ruin, days when he ran around the court in work clothes and heavy black shoes.  For his study of the Bible, and his devotion to servanthood, broken as he was.  For the hard work of my mother, and her ongoing willingness to push against some of the harder things of her own life, struggling to do the best she knew how for her children, though the results were far from perfect.  For the church in which I grew up, all the friends I looked so forward to seeing each Sunday and Wednesday.   Too many of them gone now, the threads they wove in me remain strong, stronger than I would have thought.   For the years of schooling, and the adventures of football and track, cars and dating, mistakes and glories, all of it working on me, God working on me, building and breaking as I needed.   I should write a book about those days, but it would frighten me, so many memories tinged with my own stupidity and pride.   And for music, performance, and the moments wherein I woke up to the presence of art, theatre, and beauty.   God did not have to wake me.  In fact, everything I’ve been given need not have been given at all.  There were no guarantees when I started this race, and there are none now.

Grace.   All grace.

For the day I first saw my sweet wife, though I don’t remember it with any exactitude.   For her smile, her gracious turn of smile, her unwillingness to put up with that side of me best labeled “jerk”, and for her stunning beauty as she turned up the aisle on our wedding day.  For the 25 years that passed until she tried on that wedding dress again, and looked much like she did all those years before.  For the delighted smiles of her children as they saw her in that wedding dress, and for the joy that memory brings me.   For the hard years of beginning adulthood, learning what it meant to grow up, to be a man and a couple and a worker.   God taught me depression, and how to get through it, and I’m thankful that it doesn’t derail me anymore, that it’s a lighter set of clothes than it used to be.    Back to those children:  no words, no words for what they are in the world.  All children change everything for the mother and father, and my heart could not be more full.   I won’t wax on, but God knows I cherish every moment of those little faces that live on my refrigerator, faces long transformed into older versions of themselves.   But those little faces and bodies live on, they are not gone, but perhaps only hiding.   They come out and play whenever I ask them to, and what’s best is that the larger versions are just as fine.   Claim I any credit?  None.

Grace.  All grace.

For the work of my life.   There’s no fame it, no riches, just the day to day figuring out what’s next.   But goodness, what things I get to see on the way.   Churches around the country and the world, people with shining eyes everywhere, letting their pain and joy bleed all over the people around them, and all of us the better for it.   The theatres, the movie houses, the concert halls, the gilded chamber in Austria (why can’t I remember the name of this famous town?  Will I ever be thankful for loss of memory?)…all filled with moments of human presence and works of revelation, the call of God sweeping into all these gatherings on the backs of moments of confrontation between actor and audience, violinist and bow, director and film.    Make a list of your favorite moments in film, theatre, TV, music, ballet… And then, thank God you saw them.  You didn’t have to.  Most people never will.    Oh yes, for all the actors I’ve been allowed to teach through the years.  I have seen many academy award winning moments, and they break my heart every time.    For that, too, I am thankful.

Time’s up, and I should be doing all this secretly (according to yesterday).   Okay, so I’m chastising myself.  But by analogy, who knows, maybe you’ll stop for a second and take an inventory, and just say thank you.   If you can get through your own list and memory without getting a bit misty and thick of chest with all that air and life rushing through, then you’re tougher than me.

On to more of this adventure.  Let today be a day I remember in ten years, found again in a list begetting gratitude.

“Merci”…sounds like grace…

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February 8, 2010 · 7:16 am

In Secret

I’m plowing back through Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount.  It never gets old.  In Matthew 6, Jesus says (essentially)  to be careful about what you do in public.  Dallas Willard calls this this principle of secrecy.   Pride is insidious, and even as we make a move to be generous or kind or prayerful, pride slides in alongside, even as Paul said it would.   So when we do our “acts of righteousness,”  when we give, when we pray, when we do anything for God, Jesus warns us to be careful about how it plays in public, and how we care about whether it plays in public at all.   Give, fast, and pray in secret, and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

A new thought about this came to me this morning, crystal clear.

God likes secrecy.

We often moan about all that we don’t understand about God.  We don’t get why He does or doesn’t answer prayer.   We tell ourselves stories about His movement in the world, and criticize each other for not agreeing with the way we tell the story.  Things happen to us for seemingly no reason, and our left brains go to work to assign all kinds of intent and reason to God’s action in our lives that would produce the very circumstance that appears so random, perhaps cruel, perhaps glorious.   “Why, why, why?” we cry.  “Show us Your Glory,” we tell Him, just as Moses did.   Make things clear, cut away the ambiguity, give us proof, speak a plain word we can take to the bank.

And God slips into the mist, leaving traces and clues, little more than perpetual potential for doubt.

He kept the secret of the Christ hidden for centuries, and even when He decided to tell it plainly, the telling was swift, outrageous, and frankly, almost too much, too hard to believe.   Miracles and blood, and  suddenly, the Christ was gone, nothing left but reports of unbelievable events never seen before or since, and humanity went on, pushing and pulling at God, demanding that things be plainer, that He come back out of hiding.  Stop leaving things up to the people, we say.  Show Your face.

If You are truly God, tell us so.   Vibrate sound waves with Your holy Vocal Cords, and strike my eardrums with undeniable proof, proof that can be empirically measured, recorded, and never forgotten.

God smiles, and slips back into the mist, calling us to follow him, like a playful child who knows something the adults don’t, and dares them to give chase.

We are designed for faith.

God-held secrets demand little else.

Who can tell where the wind blows…

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