Stupid words. Even before I say them, I know I'll regret them, but I speak nonetheless, breathing contempt recklessly through the scalding steam of my coffee. My friend in the chair across from me is taken aback and I cringe inside, cowering from the echoes already jangling through me. Why on earth would I say something like that? I didn't even mean it! I want nothing more than to turn back time.
Fear descends on the awkward silence that follows. What if the person I just spoke against is sitting right here? I glance around the coffeeshop and breathe easier, seeing no familiar face, but paranoia quickly invades my thoughts again. What if that woman sitting beside us knows him? What if she's his aunt and she's going to phone him up about this as soon as I get home? What if that barista knows him? Heck, what if my friend is secretly recording this conversation and streaming it live as we speak? It's a case of the robber thinking that everyone else is a robber too—when you betray someone's trust, your own trust takes a blow.
And when you wound someone with your speech, you feel the wounds tenfold. For days, I gingerly roll those words around in my heart, feel them leave fresh scars every time I replay them. By the time the week winds down to Saturday night, church night, I'm in a state of perpetual distraction. The worship songs start and I mouth along to the words, but my mind keeps circling back to that coffeeshop date, to those careless words, to the person whom I hurt without him even knowing it.
I want nothing more than to turn back time.
So I do. I think back to one cloudy recess in first grade, when I was standing in queue at the top of the play structure and waiting for my turn down the slide. As I watched one boy make his way to the bottom of the slide and walk below me back to the ladder, I picked up some of the sand that had piled up on the wooden platform. Then, for reasons I'll probably never understand, I discreetly but with great precision threw the sand down onto his head. He climbed up with a miserable look on his face, angrily brushing his hands through his hair and demanding to know who had thrown the sand. Feigning innocence, I hastily made my escape down the slide.
I'd bet anything that this boy, now in his twenties, doesn't remember this episode, but I remember it well enough for the both of us. I remember the intense guilt that my six-year-old self carried for weeks, and I remember accidentally bumping into him at the grocery store a few months later. Although he still had no idea that I was the culprit (and had probably forgotten the incident anyway), I was so ashamed that I literally couldn't bring myself to look him in the eyes. I said hello while staring at my sneakers.
It all seems so familiar. Today, just like then, I still find myself doing stupid things and spending weeks awash in remorse. How little has changed—I throw words like I threw sand.
But I come before before a God who didn't throw a stone. And that changes everything.
So I teach myself a new refrain. Each time I feel the guilt crawl through my thoughts, I answer, there is grace enough. There is grace enough for stupid words and loveless acts and bad examples. No, I have no right to slander someone over a coffee at Starbucks, but my only remedy is grace. My only escape from the mistakes lies in God, in his spirit, in his indwelling. And yet, just as that shame kept me from coming to him in worship, when I'm racked with guilt, I can't enter his presence—guilt bars me from reaching for the very thing I need.
And it reminds me.
Of a time years ago when I was so clothed in shame that I couldn't bear to look at God, when my guilt made a divide between us that stretched as far as heaven is from hell. But there was grace enough for all my mistakes, grace dressed in scars and crowned with thorns and nailed to a tree for my freedom's sake. And I will walk the path I've walked before, retrace the route from repentance to liberation, rediscover the power of his forgiveness.
How little has changed. Each day, I need the gospel just as much as I needed it the last.
And each day, like manna, the promise falls softly to the ground: there is grace enough still.
The girl in the picture is my friend J (I'll call her Jen). Last week, Jen and I met up for a conversation and mini photoshoot. Incidentally, the photoshoot ended with me stepping in some goose, uh, byproduct, with my bare foot—I'm still slightly traumatized, but even that couldn't overshadow the wonderfulness of the time we spent together. Between Jen's out-of-town university studies and ministry work, we don't get to see each other very often, but when I do meet up with her, I come away from our conversation challenged and inspired... she's one of the humblest, kindest, and most honest people I know.
During out latest meeting, we spent a lot of time talking about silence. We talked about how nice it is to have friends with whom we can share non-awkward pauses. How much better it is to let somebody's words sink in, to slowly turn them over in your mind and ponder them, instead of shooting off the obligatory, thoughtless response. And we spent some time in silence, sorting through our thoughts and savouring all of the little sounds that it amplified... the soft click of a librarian's keyboard, the footsteps brushing across the carpet, the quiet conversations of other visitors.
I'm not a confident talker.
During the first 17 years of my life, for various reasons, I had nearly no face-to-face or phone contact with my friends outside of school. Basically, my only chance to talk with people my age was during recess (which ended in grade 6), before and after classes, during lunches (many of which I spent at home anyway), and during class (but I was a good kid and didn't do that as often as I should have).
Nevertheless, I still found people who were willing to listen to me, share secrets with me, and encourage me, even if I couldn't see them beyond school grounds. Jen was one of those people—during her senior year, she spent almost every lunch hour and 8-minute between-class break with me, offering all of her free time to walk with me through everything that I was facing at the time (and, to top it off, she wrote me nice long emails every few weeks). So between the Internet, friends like Jen, and the loads of time that I spent with my parents, I can't say I lacked social contact when I was younger... sure, I missed out on the sleepovers and late-night phonecalls, but I had some of the best relationships anyone could dream of. Still, that aspect of my life affected me in one big way: it made me extremely insecure about speaking.
Over the past two years, a few changes in my life situation have given me many more opportunities to see people face-to-face. And while it's been wonderful to share secrets over coffee or sit together in the sun, it's also taken me a while to fight down the feeling of panic over not knowing what to say, or not being able to say what I want. To stop rewinding conversations in my head for days and beating myself up over a bad joke or lame remark. To make small talk with strangers (I'm so glad I've gotten better at that. The other day, I had a great chat with a man on the bus who was undergoing radiation for cancer. I can never get over what a priviledge it is when a complete stranger chooses to share his heart with me).
Last year, I had a pretty hard time learning to wade in the deeper end of the social world. It was kind of like playing badminton in high school. I was a total mess at badminton—I'd blindly swing around the racket, without any aim or strategy, in hopes that it would eventually hit the ball. And that's kind of how I talked to people last year: as soon as the conversation came barreling my way, I'd desperately shoot off a reply. Sometimes it came out mangled, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes flattering, sometimes curt; occasionally, it hit the mark of sincerity and honesty. But either way, all I really focused on was myself and what I needed to say.
With practice, I learned to be more diligent, more vulnerable, more caring in the way I spoke. But I still can't shake one big insecurity of mine: I still don't like being silent with someone. Being able to say something—anything, no matter how artless—still gives me confidence, a sense of power. I hate admitting that I don't know what to say. I hate 'wasting' someone else's time as I rummage through my thoughts. I hate not having the answers.
In Judaism, there's a custom called sitting shiva. When someone dies, friends visit the grieving family and spend a few hours sitting together in silence. Unless the mourner says something, no words are exchanged; even "hello" goes unspoken. The mourner and comforter sit together, reflecting, waiting, listening.
I remember once, during a really rough week in high school, I got up at lunch and declared to my locker bay, "Who wants to come with me and sit in front of a window and think?" I was half-joking and half-desperate. I needed space; I needed time to grieve the 'old normal' that had been replaced with a bewildering new reality. I needed to enjoy the company of another without feeling that I had to entertain or impress or explain anything to them. So a friend of mine came along and we sat in front of a big window in the hallway for half an hour, staring into the sky.
As much as I feel threatened, sometimes, by silence, I have to admit that it can also be incredibly comforting. Sometimes, presence speaks louder than words, and silence is the most sincere response you can give. It can be nice to know that you have space to wonder and dream in someone's presence. It can be nice to walk together through a sunset in quiet awe. It can be nice to listen.
Do you feel comfortable being silent around others?
Another video that looks into the spiritual side of silence.
I'm not going to post much for the next week because that's how long I have to read half a textbook and study for my last exam. After that, I have some plans for this blog that I'm pretty excited about. Until then, though, here are a few things I want to share with you...
Photoblogging
If you follow me on Twitter or like my photography page on Facebook, this is going to be a bit redundant for you, but I have a new post waiting over at my photoblog. Here's a sampling...
I've got lots of photoshoots planned this summer, so you should see more posts there if all goes as planned.
Summer reading list
I've finally put together my book list for this summer. I'm probably only going to read 8 since I'll only have two months to get through them, but here's what I'm thinking of...
- Miracles, C.S. Lewis
- Blue Like Jazz, Don Miller
- Little Heathens, Mildred Kalish
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
- All of Grace, Charles Spurgeon
- Same Kind of Different As Me, Ron Hall & Denver Moore
- The Pilgrim's Regress, C.S. Lewis
- Emma, Jane Austen
Have you read any of these?
Pinterest
I've been absolutely enamored with Pinterest lately. I have almost 5,000 faves on Flickr, over 1,000 on Tumblr, and over 500 starred items on Google Reader. With Pinterest, I can sort the best of those beautiful, inspiring things into visual pinboards by topic, subject matter, and so on. The slightly-OCD part of me is thanking me (the part of me that's trying to study is not). Here's my account; if you want an invite, give me a shout!
My favourite song of the moment
Introduced to me by the lovely and talented Jocelyn.
Askbox
If you want to drop a word or two in my askbox, I'm all ears. See you in a week! :)
A long time ago, I said that I'd begin a blog series on the topic of story. Finally making good on that promise. This won't become a regular or frequent thing, but I'll be writing posts for this series now and then, whenever inspiration hits. Here's the first...
Yesterday, I watched a bit of Dan Cruickshank's "Around the World in Eighty Treasures" series on TV.
(As a side note, I would love to have Dan come along with me to Doors Open Ottawa this weekend. He gets so enthralled by everything around him... at one point in the special, he spent a good five minutes gushing over a chair as if it were, I don't know, a rocketship or the last surviving dodo bird. I wish my own wonder and curiosity were captured that easily).
In this particular film, he made a stop in Poland to visit one of the most fascinating places I've ever seen. It's called the Wieliczka Salt Mine, and it produced salt from the 13th century all the way up till 2007, making it one of the world's oldest operating salt mines. That alone is pretty significant, but the most astonishing thing about the mine is this:
...and this...
...and this.
Those are sculptures that were carved out of the salt by the miners who worked there. The whole mine is filled with these. Many of them are religious in nature—some are reproductions of Christian iconography, others, carvings of revered saints. The skill and effort that was put into these is mindblowing.
All I could think of after I saw that (and forgive the slightly lame allegory I'm about to draw here) was that those miners had carved out a legacy in a place where we'd least expect to see one. The tools they were given became more than tools for earning money; they became tools for telling stories, tools for exploring faith, tools for worshipping their maker. And to these men, the mine was not a dark, frigid prison cell a thousand feet below the surface of the earth, but a sanctuary. They didn't need to see stained-glass windows or hear birdsong or watch sunsets to remember God's glory... and because of that, out of what looked like a tomb, a cathedral emerged.
I'm not sure I approach my life with the same kind of attitude. I depend too much on things like journals and blogs to send a message, to record my story. And since I've never been much of a journaler or a particularly disciplined blogger, I often beat myself up for not trying harder to leave a tangible legacy that future generations can look back on. But I've been coming to realize that scribbles and keystrokes and pages and posts are only a fraction of the tools that a can storyteller use.
See, I'm pretty snobby when it comes to my environment: I feel oppressed in an office cubicle or in a windowless, fluorescent-lit classroom. If I could have any job I wanted, I'd become a freelance writer and graphic designer who'd spend her days dreaming up images and weaving stories at the park or in the warm glow of a Starbucks. But I know that the reality probably won't be that pretty. Like those miners, I won't always be in a workplace (or community, or life situation, or family, or relationship) that appeals to me.
Am I going to let that snuff out my desire to tell of God? Am I going to retreat to my Moleskines and blogs to 'make a difference'? Will I be so narrow in my definition of an 'artist' that I'll miss out on the most important canvas, the greatest blank page, that lies open before me?
Or will I begin to carve out a message of glory—right where I am?
How fitting that those mining for salt many centuries ago left us with such a marvelous metaphor for what being "the salt of the earth" means. It means, in part, telling God's story right where you are with what you have. Some salt gets sprinkled on the king's dinner plate, some gets set aside for cattle to lick. Some people paint frescoes in cathedrals, others engrave them in cold, dim mines. But we wherever we are, we are to be the flavor of forgiveness, the seasoning of the Spirit. There is no place where grace cannot be proclaimed; there is no better page upon which we can write our legacy than right here.
As Charles Spurgeon said...
You are expected, therefore, to influence others for good. You are an employer; let your influence be felt by your servants. You are a child at home; let influence be felt around the social hearth. [...] Your influence must act quietly and unostentatiously, like the influence of salt, which is not noisy but yet potent. You cannot get through this world rightly by saying, "If I do no good, at least, I do no hurt;" that might the plea of a stone or a brick, but it cannot be an apology for savourless salt; for if when the salt is rubbed into the meat it does not season and preserve it, it is bad salt, and has not performed its work, but has caused loss to the owner, and left the meat to become putrid. And if you in this world, according to your capacity and means, do not affect other people for good, you have convicted yourself of being useless, worthless, a cumberer of the ground.
(Image credits: Margy's Musings; Destination Europe; Wikipedia. There are some great images here too).
It's old news, but that won't stop me from blogging about it. ;)
I know this is going to lose me coolness points among some people, but I watched the royal wedding... twice. (Didn't stay up late for it, though... I'd had enough of that during exams). I do agree that way too much fuss had been made about it in advance, but it was a lovely, very classy ceremony. So to mark the nearing one-month anniversary (and because I can't think of anything else to write about at the moment), I want to share a few of the things that I particularly liked about it.
1. The dress and decor.
I was really struck by how wonderfully understated Kate's dress was for the occasion and setting. And as I watched the wedding, I noticed that this kind of juxtaposition was a recurring trend—the simple, elegant gown against a regal, ornate carriage; the trees inside a grandiose cathedral; the royals driving off on a balloon-and-ribbon-decorated car; the intricate but very subtle, near-monochrome cake. By the end of the service, I fell in love with this pattern... those little details were breaths of fresh air against the overall background of pomp and pageantry.
As I mentioned a bit earlier, I want to start using this blog to collect and share visual inspiration, and this seems like a good place to start... I found that aspect of the wedding really inspiring. Ever since, I've been keeping an eye out for art and photos that explore that blend of aristocracy, regality and/or majesty with simplicity and subtlety. I think these capture it quite nicely (click each thumbnail to see the full piece on the artist's website)...
Left: Leanne Ellis for Santoro. Right: Arthur Rackham.
See what I'm getting at? Simple but regal.
L & R: Kate Alizadeh. Love the contrast between the
majesty of nature and the wee little celebrating people.
L: Julianna Swaney. R: Renee Nault. Don't you love
that juxtaposition between the aristocratic reader and
the elements of wilderness in Julianna's? As for
Renee's piece, ditto what I said above about Kate's.
L: Amy Sol. R: Jeremy Cowart. Amy Sol's piece is regal but
beautifully understated, and Jeremy nails the theme
in this shot taken in my home country, the Ukraine.
I've already started playing around with this theme in my sketchbook... lots of potential here. I love it when inspiration springs up in the most unexpected places.
2. Bishop Chartres' speech.
I loved this guy's address—full of grace and truth and hope, but also simple, humble, and utterly non-preachy. I don't think there was anyone in the audience, regardless of their beliefs and background, who couldn't relate to at least something he said... what a great way to establish common ground with a diverse audience. Here are a few of my favourite parts:
The spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.
I was really struck by the parallel between this and C.S. Lewis's idea that we become more ourselves when we serve God: "The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become—because he made us. He invented all the different people you and I intended to be. … It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own." Isn't it wonderful to think of marriage doing the same thing? The more we serve the other, the more we become the people that God meant us to be.
You have both made your decision today – “I will” – and by making this new relationship, you have aligned yourselves with what we believe is the way in which life is spiritually evolving, and which will lead to a creative future for the human race.
It's true. God created the world in such a way that progress and love increase together—the more love, unity, and compassion we have, the more meaningful things we produce and the more we can move forward... and upward, toward God.
As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive. We need mutual forgiveness in order to thrive.As we move towards our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads on to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can receive and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.
"Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." We can never experience the perfection of heaven here on earth, but we can start to approach it by aligning ourselves with God's ways. Expecting that perfection from people is burdensome and leads to disappointment, while journeying together to find it in God leaves a legacy that inspires future generations.
3. The cheering.
Whether it's the sound of Vancouver after the Canucks win (and I don't even care for hockey) or the sound of Britain after the heir to the throne gets married, something about cheering crowds always gets me. I think we humans are hard-wired to enjoy the sound of many voices joining together in rejoicing ...well, most of us, anyway. But, seriously, it's like a little glimpse of what heaven is going to sound like when we stand face to face with God.
4. The music.
Need I say more?
5. Princess Felizia.
I hate to make this post so girly, but I can't hold myself back from saying one more thing about fashion: didn't the Princess of Spain have the loveliest outfits for the wedding and pre-wedding dinner? I mean, half the time, I don't even notice peoples' gowns, but these are just works of art. :)
(Image credits: Will and Kate photo found here; left Princess Letizia photo by Bauer Griffin, don't know who took the one on the right. The art included in this post is copyright its respective authors, and meant solely to promote their work and to inspire. :)
You've probably seen this clip already, but in case you've not, take a look. It's wonderful (even though it's one of those sneaky videos that turns out to be a commercial in the end).
This encapsulates everything I love about writing. I get a strange satisfaction from putting just the right words into just the right places, from trying on a hundred ways of saying something before finding a phrase that fits just right, from turning a simple sentiment into something powerful, haunting, lingering. And it nicely sums up what I love about blogging, too: thousands of people getting together to write about the same things—life, religion, world news, relationships, struggles—using different words... words that challenge, inspire, and spur into action. Writing's been making me really happy lately.
And while we're on the subject of happiness, here's a list of other things that have brought me joy recently (sorry; as much as I love writing, I'm a bit too lazy to write a proper blog post at this moment). Right now, I'm grateful for...
• The baby girl who laughed the whole bus ride downtown the other day. Put me in the best possible mood for my midterm.
• Watching Charlie Chaplin's 'City Lights' with my fam this weekend. Who doesn't love a silent movie night?
• Going to a movie theatre for the first time to see 'Jane Eyre,' a book I've reread at least five times, come to life with stunning cinematography.
• IKEA frozen pancakes.
• That feeling of wanting to burst into song during long bus rides.
• Filling out volunteer applications, and the challenge of putting into words what kind of difference I want to make in my city.
• A semester that started off feeling like my worst semester ever and ended up being my best semester yet.
• A city-wide "open doors" day happening soon. My camera and I are going on an outing!
• Half a dozen half-written blog posts waiting to come alive.
• The suddenness of a late spring rainstorm.
• Church, fellowship, and worship; every day becoming more and more knit into the body of Christ.
What's made you happy today?
A few months ago, Pete Wilson posted an excellent question on his blog. He asked, "Are you honestly able to make a connect between what you do for a living and God’s Kingdom?" I started typing up a response but never posted it because I couldn't quite put into words what I wanted to say and, well, because I was ashamed of having such a bad attitude about school. Nevertheless, I saved a copy of it, and I want to share it now because I've realized a thing or two since then.
Such a good question and convicting post. I've been thinking about this nonstop. I don't have a job yet, but as a university student, I'd honestly have to answer "no." I find it really hard to make a connection between the Kingdom and my role as a student (that is, as someone who listens to lectures, does homework, studies for exams...) unless I'm in a religion/philosophy class or something of that kind. It's relevant to my future career, but not at this point directly relevant to the kingdom.It's different when it comes to my role as a friend. It's easy to connect my social time on campus with the kingdom (I attend a Christian club and Bible studies, help out with outreach efforts, have lots of great conversation with friends, etc.), but that's only one side of the coin. I still can't really find the relevance of the other side—the strictly academic part that involves writing essays and reading textbooks. Maybe I shouldn't be making this distinction between my social and academic time, but it's frustrating.
Yup, that's precisely the attitude with which I trudged through my first two years of university. And just knowing that it was a bad attitude didn't help—changing it took prayer. If I could, I'd say a couple of things to my slightly-younger self that would have saved me some stress and depression last semester.
First off, if we can eat pizza and drink tea for the glory of God, then there's got to be a way to read textbooks and write exams for his glory too. Maybe that means smiling at the prof as I pass by or not stressing out when I don't know an answer. Maybe that means getting excited about the opportunity to discover dozens of different perspectives on an issue (even if doing so entails reading a couple hundred pages). Maybe that just means being diligent and paying attention to what I'm doing. It's hard to know in advance what that looks like, but that's what makes this so exciting: I can ask God at any moment to show me exactly what about my attitude or behaviour I can change to glorify him better as I highlight that book or sharpen my pencil for that exam. By looking for God's purpose in things that seem totally unrelated to him, I'll discover just how vast and, for lack of a more powerful word, pertinent he is.
Second, my experience as a student enriches my social interactions. I understand exactly what others going through... I know the stress, the pressure, the isolation (yup, even in a university of 30,000—I didn't meet anyone from my program until 2nd year). I think it's a bit like missionary work... I'm sure that the most effective missionaries are those who spend their nights in the slums instead of sleeping in a luxury hotel (and for the record, I don't mean this judgmentally; just an illustration). The more fully I embrace and invest in student life, the better I can serve within it. I shouldn't separate the academic and social realms, just like I shouldn't separate cleaning my house form entertaining friends at my house—I can't do the latter without doing the rather-unglamorous former... at least, not as effectively.
Finally, in the words of C.S. Lewis... (which I found, incidentally, while researching for a paper. It's a tad long, but there's a lot of truth in it, and if I were you, I'd read the whole speech—it's called "Learning in War-Time.").
There is no essential quarrel between the spiritual life and the human activities as such. Thus the omnipresence of obedience to God in a Christian's life is, in a way, analogous to the omnipresence of God in space. God does not fill space as a body fills it, in the sense that parts of Him are in different parts of space, excluding other object from them. Yet He is everywhere—totally present at every point of space—according to good theologians. [...]The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course, it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty. As the author of the Theologia Germanicai says, we may come to love knowledge—our knowing—more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar's life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking our the right eye has arrived. [...]
The learned life then is, for some, a duty. At the moment it looks as if it were your duty. I am well aware that there may seem to be an almost comic discrepancy between the high issues we have been considering and the immediate task you may be set down to, such as Anglo-Saxon sound laws or chemical formulae. But there is a similar shock awaiting us in every vocation—a young priest finds himself involved in choir treats and a young subaltern in accounting for pots of jam. It is well that it should be so. It weeds out the vain, windy people and keeps in those who are both humble and tough.
