Open Heart, Open Hands : Counterintuitive in a World of Pain

“A glowing sun-orb fills an August sky the day this story begins, the day I am born, the day I begin to live.

And I fill my mother’s tearing ring of fire with my body emerging, vergin lungs searing with air of this earth and I enter the world like every person born enters the world:  with clenched fists.

From the diameter of her fullness, I empty her out—and she bleeds.  Vernix-creased and squalling.  I am held to the light.

Then they name me.

Could a name be any shorter?  Three letters without even the flourish of an “e.”  Ann, a trio of curves and lines.

It means “full of grace.”

I haven’t been.

What does it mean to live full of grace?  To live fully alive?

They wash my pasty skin and I breathe and I flail.. I flail.

For decades, a life, I continue to flail and strive and come up so seemingly. . . empty.  I haven’t lived up to my christening.

Maybe in those first few years my life slowly opened, curled like cupped hands, a receptacle open to the gifts God gives.  But of those years I have no memory.  They say memory jolts awake with trauma’s electricity.  That would be the year I turned four.  The year when blood pooled and my sister died and I, all of us, snapped shut to grace.

Standing at the side porch window, watching my parents’ stunned bending, I wonder if my mother had held me in those natal moments of naming like she held my sister in death.

In November light, I see my mother and father sitting on the back porch step rocking her swaddled body in their arms.  I press my face to the kitchen window, the cold glass, and watch them, watch their lips move, not with sleep prayers, but with pleas for waking, whole and miraculous.  It does not come.  The police do.  They fill out reports.  Blood seeps through that blanket bound.  I see that, too, even now.

. . .At the grave’s precipice, our feet scuff dirt, and chunks of the firmament fall away.  A clod of dirt hits the casket, shatters.  Shatters over my little sister with the white-blonde hair, the little sister who teased me and laughed, her milk-white cheeks dimpled right through with happiness. . . They lay her gravestone flat into the earth, a black granite slab engraved with no dates, only the five letters of her name.  Aimee.  It means “loved one.”  How she was.

We had loved her.  And with the laying of her gravestone, the closing up of her deathbed, so closed our lives.

Closed to any notion of grace.”                 (excerpt from One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp)

A few of us might be spared tragedy.  Some may never be utterly betrayed or violated.  Shattered dreams may not visit everyone’s waking hours.  But, as Marcus Borg states,  “None of us gets out of this alive.”  If pain, unspeakable ache, has not yet seared your soul, it likely will.

Such bewildering unfairness raises many “why” questions, and the answers escape us.  Of even greater importance than resolving the “why” questions is this:  How will I respond?

When tragedy strikes, will I respond with clenched fists –or—open hands?  When betrayal lacerates my heart, will that broken heart “snap shut to grace,” or in brokenness remain open to God and goodness? 

I have done both.  Regrettably, I have spent years with closed fists, angry at God, at life, for gut-goring tragedy in one season of my life, for a broken relationship that nearly buried me  in another season.

It seems my life has been a  painstakingly slow plodding toward opening my heart, my hands to receive grace, to express gratitude.

My closed heart and clenched fists were how I coped.  But it was no way to live.  To live a life of the closed fist is to always be looking back, rather than living in the present.  It’s a life of reaction; I want to live a life of response.  I’m tired of the backward look at the unfairness, the abuse, the tragedy, the plethora of grievances and spending the present moment reacting to it all.  I’m not suggesting there is no value in looking back; in fact, I think it’s an essential component of grieving and healing.  I need to visit the past, not live in it. If I’m always looking back at the past, I will miss living in the moment.

And there is grace and goodness now that I earnestly desire to savor.

May God give you and Amy Voskamp and me open hearts and hands to, in time, receive healing and wonder and joy.

Fundamentalism: A Blessing and a Beating

I am a recovering fundamentalist.   I go to meetings weekly--every Sunday morning at a grace-filled church.  Ironically, I am grateful for aspects of my fundamentalist heritage.  My childhood fundamentalist church instilled in me a respect for and devotion to the Bible as the revealed Word of God.  In those early years I memorized much Scripture.  It wasn't that I was devout and preferred the Bible to my comic books; the church instilled and impressed those passages upon my mind. To this day recalling some of those passages in times of turmoil has brought me encouragement.  For that I am grateful.   


My fundamentalist past taught me the reality of objective Truth.  There are anchoring truths--realities--which, indeed, are true, whether or not I choose to acknowledge them.   That, to this day, instilled within me a passionate pursuit of what and Who is Truth.    For that, too, I am thankful.


Unfortunately, virtues pursued to excess become vices--and much of fundamentalism is about extremes, rather than balance.   The fundamentalist preoccupation with Word precluded little attention to Spirit.  My faith and life was centered on rule-keeping, rather than relationship.  It was a life of merely obeying God, devoid of loving God--or having a sense of God loving me.  My church instilled a fear-based life of obedience.  My obedience was not prompted or fueled by my love for God, but by our fear of falling into the hands of a holy God.  I was squeaky clean behaviorally, but shamed and fearful emotionally.  It was a terrible world with which to cope. 


 In our focus on truth, and this is a common trait of fundamentalism, we believed that we alone possessed the Truth.   We were very exclusive, which you would think would appear to us as a contradiction to the life and teachings of Jesus.  It wasn't a part of our consciousness then, nor is it among fundamentalists now.  If there is a disagreement in beliefs, the other party's stance or belief isn't regarded as different, but as wrong.  Consequently, even though many of my friends attended other denominations which held the same basic view of  Christ/ the Bible that we did, because they differed from us in other areas of belief we viewed them as either back-sliders or heretical, and it was our mission to "witness" to Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, certainly Catholics, and anyone else who wasn't us. 

That way of thinking breeds a self-righteousness  (which, in the gospel records, Jesus adamantly rejects) and a sense of moral superiority (which--who would have thought?--in the gospel records, Jesus adamantly rejects.)   We were concerned about the eternal destiny of these "lost souls" but simultaneously looked down upon them, loathing their language and and judging their behavior. 


Fundamentalism tends to breed a negation of life, rather than an affirmation of our existence.  Growing up I knew what was wrong, what I couldn't and shouldn't do, but I had no clue what I was meant and designed  to do.  Thou-shalt-nots prevailed.    That negation is all-encompassing; it is a mindset, the Weltanschaaung --the worldview, the way they perceive reality.  Typically, if a fundamentalist encounters a different belief or theological concept, the initial and, usually, the settled response is, "I know what is true and I know I am right; there is something spurious about this person's belief.  Be wary!!"  Seldom is there an openness to the possibility that I might learn from this other person, that maybe they have something to offer me that might enrich or expand my existing faith.  Instead, "they are wrong and it's up to me to refute them."  It's a negation of anything incoming that does not arise from their own closed system.  


I cannot adequately communicate the depth of relief  I feel in God having extricated me from that system decades ago.  It was oppressive, the dead legalism suffocating.  To be transported and transformed from a life of fearful obedience to a life that is loving response is a beautiful thing.  To move from being saved by God to being loved by God is, as they say, priceless. 

I feel a heaviness lately,  birthed on two fronts.  On an individual level, I am  feeling unfairly judged.  Someone I love very much is a fundamentalist and they are rejecting much of what and who I read--my mentors--and is the next step a rejection of me?  That would be terribly painful.  On a corporate level, our church is facing  judgment and  rejection by certain fundamentalist believers.  I love our church and so that pain is also felt by me. 


I need grace.  My initial impulse is not one of a loving response.  It makes me angry; I want to fight back.  I want to tell them how unlike Jesus they are in their condemnation, in their exclusivity.  I want to tell them that the Ultimate Judgment will not focus on whether or not we give mental assent to a certain number of theological propositions about Jesus.  We will be judged not on the basis if I held all the right beliefs about Jesus, but if I lived and loved like Jesus.   


But if I resort to that, then I am no different than these individuals who seem so judgmental.  I need grace.  I want to love when condemned.  I need to bless when seemingly cursed.  I want to bestow the love of Christ when hammered by the letter of the law. 

I have a long way to go.  I don't want my first reactive response to be one of regarding them as "freakin' fundies," but as my brothers and sisters.  And I want to love these brothers and sisters in God's family who would question my own belonging to that same family.

I need grace.


 (I apologize for the drought in my blogging.  We were out of the country the past 2 weeks, preceded by a 3 month hitch in Honduras.  I hope to re-establish some consistency in writing.  Thanks for your patience.)

Variations and Vulgarities of Christianity

There's a lot out there that passes as authentic Christianity.  And they are all warning about false teachers, as though they alone possess the truth.  In my channel surfing I, at times, go to  local religious channel 20.  It's a sad commentary on the state of religion in the Midwest  that I go there for entertainment rather than inspiration.  There are individuals uttering off-the-wall platitudes that have no ring of truth about it but if  they clothe it with a Bible verse I guess the audience believes it to be true.


Last night my good friend and colleague, Howard, called me and was chuckling as he said, "Check out Channel 20."   I flipped over and a woman was holding the Bible in her left hand and her right hand was extended --not with open palm but with the index finger pointed at me.  And she was yelling and threatening and condemning.  My thought bubble read, Just like Jesus?

This did not evoke laughter; it  brought back disturbing memories of my childhood fundamentalism.  Angry, yelling preachers.  Invariably shaming us for not being and doing better.  Ironically, hell was probably referenced more than heaven.  My faith was fear-based; I obeyed because of the damning consequences.  I  obeyed or followed Jesus  not because I was drawn to him, I did so because I dreaded him. That preacher gritting his teeth and spitting exhortations was, in my boyish eyes, Jesus--and he scared the hell out of me.  For a long time, what should have been a time of innocent childlike joy was, instead, a harrowing nightmare from which I feared I would never awaken.  This angry screaming Jesus made me very anxious on a good day--terrified on bad days.  Living like this was terrible and the thought of living forever, i.e. going to heaven, was intolerable.  Isn't that sick?  Most people think of heaven or "eternal life" as an unending experience of peace and beauty and restored relationships and healing and the list goes on.  I couldn't stand the thought of being in the presence of this angry Jesus forever.  I thought heaven would be pure hell.  "Dear God, please don't make me live forever. When I die just let me become nothing and have no brain and no heart and not live at all."  That was my thinking as I would lay down at night and dread going to sleep because what if I were to die in my sleep and fall into the hands of this angry God!?!


Last night channel 20 activated some stuff that had been lying dormant.  (Ya think?)

I am grateful that the 18 years I was confined in that religious milieu didn't define me.  It definitely influenced me, but the ensuing years have defined me. Since those early years, I have seen through those vulgar caricatures of Jesus and God has shown me Jesus of the gospels.  My life no longer consists of  merely following rules, but following Christ.  It's about relationship, not rules.  That has been liberating!  The caricature no longer damns me; the Christ now draws me.


I love this picture of Christ that is contained in the gospel of Matthew (12:19-20):


"He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out."


Jesus does not yell at us; he beckons to us.  I was a bruised reed boy and the preachers of my subculture nearly broke me.  There was scarcely a flickering flame of life in me and they nearly snuffed it out.  But Jesus intersected my life through people who mirror him and they imparted to me acceptance and affirmation and grace.  And I am a blessed man.

Now when I am bruised  I don't hide my hurt in fear of being condemned; I reach out to him for healing.  When the wick is barely smoldering I run to him for fire. 

And the idea of living forever wherein I will be in the very presence of God (and all the ramifications of what that may mean) is a vision that compels me and completes me.


I have to avoid channel 20 in the meantime.

A Long Face and a Short Fuse

This most recent setback has evoked within me angst and anger. For me they seem to go hand-in-hand. If I'm anxious it's typically accompanied by anger. If I'm saddened, often anger is the surface emotion, masking the sadness. If I'm fearful, I show my raging heart, not my racing heart.

Some of it is unique to me; some of it you struggle with, as well. I think a lot of us men, in particular, wrestle with anger. At the risk of sounding like I'm avoiding personal responsibility, I think men in our culture are groomed to be angry and to show anger as our default emotion. Generally, we are taught or modeled that we are "weak" or "unmanly" if we feel or express sadness or fear or loneliness. We're supposed to "suck it up; be a man." If we didn't quit crying, you know what we'd be given--"something to cry about!" The emotions of feeling sad or afraid or lonely are regarded as "weak." And what emotion is viewed as "strong?"

Showing sadness makes me vulnerable; it puts me on the defense. On the other hand, expressing anger is not threatening to me, but to others. It puts me on the offense. Anger is a man's trump card. Talk about a stacked deck.

Of late I find I'm sad for the world one minute and mad at the world the next. None of us can afford to stay in either camp for long. If I remain sad, I will implode and long for light as I languish in the dark night of depression. If I remain angry, I will explode and you will receive all future blog posts from the Peoria County Jail.

I'm in need of grace and seeking mercy. There's a passage in the Bible that cautions us: "See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." (Hebrews 12:15) It's as though God is saying that in the midst of all that, on the surface, looks like it's gory and godforsaken--grace is also there. The passage also seems to indicate that if a "root" of bitterness is allowed to grow within me, it may, indeed, blind me to or prevent me from receiving the grace God desires to impart.

God, I don't want to miss your grace.

I want to come out of this a better man, not a bitter man.