Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Drive

Here in the academic world, many of us would call ourselves "driven." Driven to succeed, to excel, to spend long hours in a dark, crowded library in the pursuit of knowledge, or, more likely, that ever-elusive "A" so valued by graduate school application committees. Most of us spend large parts of our day doing something we don't enjoy in order to achieve what we feel is expected of us, either by our parents, teachers or friends, or by our selves.

Basic responsibilities aside, most of us don't need to do these things to have a happy and fruitful life. Really, what will five points on a test mean to our children or our grandchildren? Will any of our efforts still be meaningful ten or twenty years down the road? Yet, I for one feel compelled to succeed, and quite a few of my friends feel the same way. Where does this need for success come from?

Most of us, as human beings, feel the need to create something. We are constantly re-ordering and influencing our environment. We set ourselves to solving problems, thinking about things beyond our personal experience, dreaming, wishing. This is what makes us human, what sets us apart from even the most intelligent animals. We are all driven to do.

As part of the Marsh Associate Intern program, I am asked to participate in intensive discernment of God's purpose for my life. Since I experienced the call to ministry, suddenly and intensely a year and a half ago, I've felt little uncertainty about what that purpose is. I am not claiming to have a direct phone line to God, although that would definitely be first on my list of super powers to possess. The reason that I'm certain of my direction is that I literally feel driven towards what I believe God wants me to do in my life, namely devote my life to ministry.

Ministry was not something I wanted to do. One of my many emotions on receiving a call to ministry was anger. I was angry at God for denying my own plans and wants, and instead telling me to do something I had never wanted, never asked for, and was terrified of. Fortunately that feeling was tempered by the thousands of others I was experiencing: joy, gratitude, love, purpose, etc. Today I am supremely happy to be going in to missions work. I know of nothing I would rather do, but it took a lot of tearful conversations both with God and trusted friends to reach that point.

Each and every one of us has a purpose in life. I'd like to think that the things that we are driven to do are one and the same with this purpose. What I do know is that God loves us more than we could ever understand and that He knows each of our purpose. So, don't begrudge time to your passions, what you feel your true purpose is, since:

we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

Still Sleeping

This week in my Varies of Early Christianity class we are reading Augustine. It is surprising how easily I connected with his ideas, though he wrote in the 5th century and here I am in the 21st. This semester I've been thinking a lot about addiction. Whether it pertains to my family, my friends, or myself, it seems as though addiction has been a common trend for me this semester in a detrimental way. In Augustine's "Confessions," he addresses the attractive pull of vices in a way that helped me understand their power.
"The burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness such as commonly occurs during sleep... Noone wants to be asleep all the time, and the sane judgement of everyone judges it better to be awake. Yet often a man defers shaking off sleep when his limbs are heavy with slumber. Although displeased with himself he is glad to take a bit longer, even when the time to get up has arrived."
Habits are easily formed and even more easy to fall back into. All my detrimental habits are ones I enjoy in the moment, but regret later. Reason tells me one thing, and desire another. "Confessions" was written with many aspects of faith in mind, a few being chastity and converting to Christianity. It is in this context Augustine further writes:
"But I was an unhappy young man, wretched from as at the beginning of my adolesence when I prayed you for chastity and said: 'Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.' I was afraid you might here my prayer quickly and that you might too rapidly heal me of the disease of lust that I preferred to satisfy rather than suppress."
I think this applies to so much more than sexual desire. Whenever I have vices that I feel like I can't get ahold of, it's because consistently waiting until next time to fix the problem. I have heard people say, with ironic indignation in their voices, anything that feels good is probably a sin. By this I think they mean the suppression of drinking, sex, drugs use, or even chocolate gorging. The tradition of the church has been to ban all of these actions, perhaps to stave-off potential excess in any of these areas. Historically the Church's view says: To avoid any problems, do not engage in the first place. I understand this philosophy-- addiction is a slippery slope. I've seen the downward spiral of alcoholism affect a friend, starting from occasionally being excessively intoxicated on the weekend to getting kicked out of bars on Tuesday nights. However, I think moderation shows much more internal power than deprivation. Can I have one piece of chocolate without eating the whole box? Can I drink one beer without taking seven shots? Can I be aware of, and engage with, the potential of addiction without falling into it's trap?

Coming out of the Lenten season, I have returned to Facebook. Do not think I'm being dramatic as I say that Facebook is definitely detrimentally addictive. "Creeping" people has taken hours away from my life. So why don't I just delete it all together? Because I don't think Facebook is all bad. It allows me to keep in contact with my friends abroad, see the growth of my cousin's baby boy, and make sure my brothers are staying in line. Just like a glass of red wine can be good for the heart, Facebook in moderation can keep me more socially connected. To me, self-discipline is much more admirable when enacted with temperance, rather than denial.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Concerning Baseball

Despite a contentious relationship with sporting events, especially baseball, I find myself a resident of the "Fenway/Kenmore" area, living in the shadows of 'The Green Monstah," and smack in the capital of the Red Sox Nation. So why am I writing about baseball? Because for Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday, baseball was mentioned in both services I attended, by two of my favorite people on the planet (and in the Red Sox nation).

"Preachers often say that resurrection is a metaphor for something like it... hope for the Red Sox." When Dr. Robert Cummings Neville says something like this, blending the profane world of baseball with my sacred world of... his theology- well I have to take it seriously. No, I am not saying I will become an avid sports fan after all of these years (sorry Mom and Dad), but I am saying that if the Red Sox have hope, so do I. Dr. Neville, from where I sit in the pews, is quite a fascinating person. I remember my first Easter Vigil with Dr. Neville three years ago. This was the first time I had heard him preach, and what he said was totally unexpected, and filled me with hope. Imagine if you will, a red bearded, bespectacled man, in white robe and cassock, smiling happily with warm eyes from the pulpit, a seasoned minister, a well-respected theologian. And then he drops the Harry Potter bomb. Yup, he went there, and also went to 'drunken orgy' and 'zombie Jesus' all in one sermon. I was floored. I was overjoyed. For me, that is the way hope works; even if we are looking for it diligently, hope takes us by surprise.

Today Dean Hill's Easter Sermon quoted Mickey Mantle, "Today I learned I do not have to perform in order to be loved." He put this in the context of Prevenient Grace. Oh Prevenient Grace- that idea we Methodists love so much, and we inclusivists cringe at not wanting to impose our Savior on others. I am learning how to unite the two: we are taken on our own terms- even when we fail to meet them. Phew, that's a relief. That gives me hope, unexpectedly.

So here it is, the tie in: The Red Sox have hope, and I have hope, and hope comes from unexpected places like profound theological statements in the guise of 'profanity', and hope comes in the form of Grace, even when we think we are failing.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

"El buen amor"

I am sure few of my readers are scholars of Medieval Spanish. Those that are, or those who have taken History of the Spanish Language at Boston University, will recognize part of the title of the famous work by Juan Ruiz dating to the fourteenth century: "El libro del buen amor." Ruiz was a higher-ranking member of the Spanish clergy, a fact that did not stop him from writing over a thousand verses on carnal love, featuring dozens of women from all over the socio-economic, political, and ethnic scale.

If that wasn't enough to create an early church sex scandal, Ruiz added insult to injury by using religious language and Bible quotes to narrate his romantic encounters. The phrase "el buen amor," which for Middle Age society referred to love for God, was pilfered by Ruiz and used as a term for a successful sexual episode. Thus, what for Middle Age society was a black and white issue between salvation and sin was turned on its head by one author, starting a literary tradition of blending sex with religion, piety with physical love.

This Holy Week is yet another annual reminder of a different kind of love, a perfect love, a love so deep that it sparked the ultimate sacrifice: the humiliation and death of God's only Son for humankind. A love so great that it continues, steadfast and strong, despite our daily rejection. We, as Christians, are meant to transfer this divine love to our human neighbors as Jesus commanded us, saying:

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This commandment, even in the best of circumstances, is never easy. It is hard enough to love those that love you in such a way as to fully mirror divine love. Harder still is romantic love. When sexuality, attraction, insecurities, and dreams of the future enter the scene it is near impossible to love unequivocally. Where do feelings end and generosity begin? How do we leave our own desires behind long enough to fully love, when our own desires are so tied up in the other person. Can Christ-like love and sexuality co-exist?

As I move into the adult phase of my life, I struggle to answer these questions, both from within a relationship and from outside of one. As a future minister I struggle with where my duties as a pastor end in regards to my own personal relationships and where my sexuality fits in to my spirituality. I hope my own search for "el buen amor" will not, like Juan Ruiz's, end in tensions and perversions, but rather harmony and resolution.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

On Death and Dying

Many of you know that I am taking a course on Jewish Bioethics. In said course, we have had extensive discussions on how one defines death, and how one defines dying. There is, indeed a difference. Today, Palm Sunday, ushers in a week all about death- and then life afterwards. As we are not yet to Easter (we're still in Lent!) I will not quite get to the life afterwards in this post. I will stay firmly in death and dying, and in the life that surrounds that.

It has always struck me how calmly and ever-coolheadedly Jesus goes to his death. Disregard ideas of sin, and divinity, and carrying our burdens, but think about just a man: a man walking, betrayed by his peers, sentenced to death, carrying a giant wooden structure, and being taunted all the way up until his last breaths. And yet, he remained so poised, so composed, ever leading, ever teaching. Yes, Jesus teaches us how to live properly, but he also teaches us to die properly. Dying, is indeed an inevitable fact of life, and thus a part of it.

Dean Hill's meditation on the Passion of St. Matthew today reads, "Let us meet evil with honesty, grief with grace, failure with faith, and death with dignity. Let us carry ourselves in belief."

When reading this passage, I immediately decided I would write about it for this blog. Evil, grief, failure, and death all happen to each and every one of us. However, so does honesty, grace, faith, dignity, and that pesky one: belief. Whatever we believe in, our belief carries us. For Christians, our belief carries us, should we trust it, with dignity, with faith, with grace, and with honesty throughout our life, and throughout our death.

I will close with a poem, very dear to my heart:

To Him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world -- with kings,
The powerful of the earth -- the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, -- the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods -- rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. -- Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings -- yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep -- the dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest -- and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn, shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.



-Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Cynical Faith

This week I am trying to write a paper about Jonah and the big fish for my Hebrew Texts class. This Bible story has been told to me since I could look at picture books, and so I assumed I understood it. As it turns out, the biblical scholar’s interpretation of Jonah is far different from that of the children’s book writer. In childhood, I was taught that the narrative went something like this: God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah ran away because he was scared, God was angry at Jonah and sent a storm, Jonah was swallowed by a fish, and then, because he apologized, God spit him out and Jonah followed his intended path. In this childish story, everyone receives redemption, and God is an ever-compassionate Lord. Now I’m learning, and writing, about how the story is perceived from an academic standpoint. Scholars think the Book of Jonah might be a parody, it is generally understood that Jonah’s adventure into “the big fish” never happened, and Jonah is sometimes considered a malicious protagonist, rather than a man who over comes his doubt in God. I am formulating right now a thesis arguing Jonah is a false profit, according to Deuteronomy’s definition.

The disillusionment of faith is hard to swallow. It even seems oxymoronic to say that disillusionment of faith even exists, but I really think it does. That may be why people get discouraged with their religion so easily. However, without this kind of new understanding that naturally occurs as people are exposed to more events and ideas, faith and theology would remain shallow and synthetic. Without contemplating concepts that could possibly embitter a person, how could anyone prove that their faith or belief system has any base in reality? Or any real strength? I have probably said this before, and I will definitely say it again, but right now my main one-liner, my essential thought is: “Anything worth believing in can stand up to questions.” If I can not entertain the idea that maybe the stories I was told when I was young about the Bible are over simplifications of very complex accounts, how can I ever understand how God works on a more complex plain? Embracing the cynical, academic understanding of texts I consider sacred enables me to reflect on the way God speaks to me through them.

"Be still and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10

Those of you who know me personally know that silence is not my strong point. A combination of extreme gregariousness, love of languages, a penchant for drama, and the (false) belief that most of what I have to say should be heard, does not lend itself to meditative reflection.

Teachers the world over have gently reminded me: you can't listen if you're talking no matter how hard you try. Unfortunately, they're right. Believe me, I've tried. Although I love other people, especially their views and interests, my challenge has been to curb my own enthusiasm for sharing long enough for them to share. Thankfully, people have taken the time to teach me how to do this. Thanks to their help I'm doing very well. Sometimes I can even listen to a friend without, gasp, interjecting any of my own thoughts, ideas, or experiences.

It is one thing to be able to take turns in a conversation and quite another to be comfortable in silence. I am not comfortable with silence. Instead of taking a step back, observing the situation and thinking, I usually feel the need to fill the empty space with chatter. Since I almost always have something to say, be it worthwhile or not, this can go on for a while.

Last Sunday I participated in a Quaker Clearness Committee as part of my Pre-Seminary group meeting. A Clearness Committee is a Quaker practice that is meant to help with making personal decisions. The practice rests on the belief that "each of us has an inner teacher, a voice of truth. that offers the guidance and power we need to deal with our problems, but that inner voice is often garbled by various kinds of inward and outward interference" (Palmer, Parker J.). A Clearness Committee helps to remove that interference by creating a space in which a focus person, the person who has a personal decision to make, can bring their question to others in a safe and non-judgmental environment. The other members of the Clearness Committee will not make suggestions or offer advice, but ask open-ended questions meant to facilitate the focus person's own wisdom. The process involves long silences and inner reflection, both by the focus person and the others on the committee.

During my Clearness Committee I discovered a radical thing: it was only when I quieted my thoughts, my fears, my own inner monologue, that I was able to pick apart which of my motives were coming from myself, which were from outside pressures, and which were coming to me from some place else. I discovered that the "still, small voice" doesn't speak to us through words, but rather through certainty. We must be still in order to know. Knowing might not mean knowing the answer to our personal questions, at least it certainly does not in my case, but I do know that God is there, He has a plan for all of us, and that His plan is right, wonderful, and beautiful.

During this Lenten season, as I already said, I am working on meditation and relaxation. For once in my life I'm sitting down, shutting up, and listening. It is only when I am silent that others can speak. While discernment is a personal process, we are also called not only to live in community and fellowship with others, but also to live with, in, and for God. As Mother Teresa so wisely said:

"We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature -- trees, flowers, grass -- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls."


Monday, April 11, 2011

Inner Walls

I got a job this week a The Boston Language Institute in Kenmore square. My bosses there are Sikh, and extremely devoted to their tradition. In my interview we fell on the topic of my post-grad goals, and they were happily surprised to learn that I want to be a pastor in the United Church of Christ. From there, we compared our different faith traditions and discussed their similar aspects. At one point my new supervisor said something to the effect of, "I feel so sad when conversation about faith practice is walled off because my evangelical Christian friends believe I am going to hell. Though, of course, I make that wall myself."

Her intuitive statement surprised me. I have struggled for a long time to love the people who probably think I am soiling the Christian name by simultaneously worshiping Jesus and embracing other faiths, sexualities, and political ideals. In fact, I really resent people who adhere to the strict one-path method to achieving salvation, because they must think I'm going to hell too. The question is, though, who does this resentment hurt? The people it's aimed toward? No. They're mentality and happiness is not marred by the dark cloud I see looming over-head them when I see them. I am the only one building the wall and the tension inside myself against people who essentially don't have the same beliefs I do, though we are supposed to be in the same religion. Christianity is the simple umbrella under which all of our more complex ideas reside.

This past weekend, the new Marsh Associates had a retreat where we talked about the concept of the way doubt has affected our lives. I spoke about the time I doubted whether my faith and my sexuality could coincide harmoniously. My freshman year of college, at University of New Hampshire, I joined a chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ, and got lunch with a girl from that student group. This person proceeded to tell me that, while she thinks homosexuality is a sin, she loves all sinners, and while she does not struggle with homosexuality herself, she too sins in other ways. I had a minor melt-down after this lunch because I realized that I was no longer in the "safe-zone" with God. I can claim, with some validity, that it's because of their intolerance or ignorance that I resent right-wing Christians, but I think I truly resent them because their beliefs make me doubt my security with God. This is a wall that I create for myself, and from now I'm going to work to recognize the tension I create within myself, rather than the tension people build for me.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

On Another Note

In last week's post, I wrote about the comforting powers of lyrics and song, and how words can resonate in the soul and engender peace and strength. This week, by coincidence only (I don't plan on making this a theme, I promise), I have decided to tell a story about a piece of music- a different time, a different place, a different genre.

The story begins a year ago, when a young man sent me a recording of him playing piano. The file was entitled, "Notturne." The melody of the song swayed. It climbed and tripped playfully through the scales with ease. It's one of those pieces that gives you starry eyes full of dreams and hope. At the same time, it calls you to reach out and run to whatever it is you're dreaming for. This recording became a constant companion through stressful nights of studying, bleary-eyed evenings of wishing for home, and those times when I couldn't help but feel I was alone.

And then my phone died.

The recording was lost, and the friend had long since banished me from his life. I was busy enough that I forgot about the song for a while, and then I decided I needed to look for it. And look I did. I knew of Chopin's "Nocturne" collection, and I listened and searched for it many times through. For a year, I kept looking around, pricking my ears at any tinkle of a piano in hopes of finding that familiar melody. I even called upon friends who played piano and sang bits of the melody, described the sounds, and asked if they had any idea which Chopin piece it was? Then, one day, at rock bottom, I decided it was time: I would go to the source. I had avoided contacting the young man for quite some time, in fear that old angers would be reawakened, and well- that was just not something I could handle. But I did it: I sent the email, I asked which was the Chopin piece that he had recorded so long ago. The speedy response, without anger or spite read, "I believe the piece you're looking for is Grieg's 'Notturno,' here is a link to a recording." I was reunited with my song at last. In fact, the young lady right next to me knew the piece well, and immediately sat down at the piano and played it for me.

What indeed, does any of this have to do with spiritual discernment? Well, as a candidate for ordained ministry, I must answer several questions. The first boils down to: "Do you believe in God?" This would be simple if I believed in the socially acceptable, neat, compact-able, entity of God. I haven't really hammered out the details on how my ideas of God really all fit together, but I do believe in something- or I want to! For a long time, I struggled trying to believe in a cloud-faced man in the sky. It was something I just couldn't do. But of course- this was supposed to be what I believed in, all my life I prayed to this father-figure God! I had to believe that! Didn't I? So I kept looking for that God. I kept searching for that God; that easy place where religious society smiles and says I did a good job, that place where everything seemed under God's control. Like I said, it was just something I couldn't do. So I started looking elsewhere. I asked Brother Larry, I listened to Doctor Neville (and hoped that some of his genius would leak out and I could sop it up), I delicately nosed around my parents' brain. I, indeed, had to really start asking the hard questions. I had to bite the bullet and just do it. I had to figure out where I was looking for God, because historically, I was on my own.

So that's the take away folks: Sometimes we have an idea in mind of what we're looking for, whether it be a piece of music or a way of thinking about God, but we might be looking for the wrong thing entirely. Sometimes, we need a helping hand (even if it's hard to ask for) to point us in the right direction.

Don't give up the search.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Guess what? We are alive!

"When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain, And brings out the wind from His storehouses" (Jeremiah 10:13)

Friends, it is spring. It's confirmed by the daffodils shyly blooming in the dark, earthen squares outside of my dorm room; in the buds on the trees, painfully pushing their way out of hibernation; yes, even in the wind and rain that ruffles my calm and makes me curse the forgetful streak that made me leave my umbrella at home. So, in the spirit of spring, here's a cliché: in case you haven't heard, spring brings new life. I know, shocking, but, I promise, this isn't the main point of my post, only a seasonal relation to it.
The main point is this: on the way home from Boston University's Fitness and Recreation Center this morning, as I propelled my body through the blustering wind, wishing I was somehow more aerodynamic, I came upon a realization. It's amazing that I'm alive. My body, our bodies as human beings, are so very fragile. A car, a bullet, a blood clot, a microscopic organism, can all upset the delicate machine that is our bodies and bring about our end. Given that all of these things are, last time I checked, abundant in our world, my life is a miraculous occurrence. Furthermore, miracle of miracles, I am not only alive, but relatively healthy, able-bodied, alert, enthusiastic, and very happy.
Several of my atheist friends have told me that the only time in which they consider the possibility that God exists, is when they think of the detail and precision necessary for sustaining life. So much of nature is stunning, not just in its beauty, but in how systematically balanced it is. One atom, one drop of water, one chromosome misplaced, and we are no longer alive, we are no longer whole. How could something so astoundingly complex be the result of random explosions of energy. Doesn't this level of synchronous living point to a designer that is omnipotent, omniscient, kind, and awesome?
Therefore, since spring is here, and since new life bursts into this world all around us, here I offer one reason out of a million for why I believe in God. I believe in God because I am alive. Being alive is beautiful.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Birds and Winged Things

For those of our readers who know me personally, these past couple weeks have been dark. I have struggled to find hope and strength. Furthermore, I have struggled to find hope and strength in the right places. I am in a time of change, looking to grasp at anything that will make my spinning world slow down, even for a bit.

At the risk of making this professional blog a little too personal (I swear this has a relevant religious point), I will briefly say that I kept looking at myself, looking in myself, asking, "Why can't you do this, Rebekah? You used to be able to do this. You didn't used to be so unstable. The ability to accomplish this is somewhere inside you! You say so, everyone else says so!" Well, of course there's my problem: it wasn't. That which carried me through dark times was never some organically-grown-Rebekah-fiber that made everything work. It was the grace of God, through friends, through family, through all the windows in the outside world where God peeks in, it was that which got me through it all. Yes, some of it was a little bit of gumption on my part, but most of it came from compassionate creatures who loved unconditionally, who cared unconditionally, and who dyed my hair pink on a Thursday night because something has to change.

Listening to music has often been one of those therapeutic, soothing, activities for me. As such, I would like to discuss a song, from my parent's generation, that helped get me through this week, not only in it's hearing but in it's understanding. The song comes from The Beatles, and a rendition was performed by Kurt on the popular TV show "Glee."

Historically, while a fan of the Beatles, I have never been particularly keen on the song, "Blackbird." And then Kurt sang it in memorium of a dead mascot. A lyric I once understood as "You were only waiting, for this moment to arrive" was suddenly, "You were only waiting, for this moment to arise." The change of one word changes so much: rather than a doleful resignation to a change in state (in this case death), it becomes a message of hope: you, bird, you can now go on to better things, you are now free to go on and tackle that which comes next: arise, bird, and do that which you were made to do. Another piece of the lyrics reminds us, "Blackbird fly, into the light of the dark black night." This week, for me, that has been a reminder that yes- things are dark, but there is light: now find it, and get there: just go.

To tie this all back to trying times in the Bible, I call upon Job, because while I realize my situation has not been so dire, has not been so depressing, so trying, so excruciating, that doesn't mean my situation hasn't felt a bit like Job's. "On whom does his light not rise?" (Job 25:3). So let us all be reminded, we are under God's jurisdiction, we are under God's light, and we are all together, even in the dark.