“Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of–something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side?  Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for?  You have never had it.  All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it–tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear.  But if it should really become manifest–if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself–you would know it.  Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, “Here at last is the thing I was made for.”  We cannot tell each other about it.  It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work.  While we are, this is.  If we lose this, we lose all.” –C.S. Lewis

He [God] will save you from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day.
–Psalm 91:3-5

“At some point we all face the same decision–what will we do with the Arrows we’ve known?  Maybe a better way to say it is, what have they tempted us to do?  However they come to us, whether through a loss we experience as abandonment or some deep violation we feel as abuse, their message is always the same: Kill your heart.  Divorce it, neglect it, run from it, or indulge it with some anesthetic (our various addictions).  Think of how you’ve handled the affliction that has pierced your own heart.  How did the Arrows come to you?  Where did they land?  Are they still there?  What have you done as a result?

To say we all face a decision when we’re pierced by an Arrow is misleading.  It makes the process sound so rational, as though we have the option of coolly assessing the situation and choosing a logical response.  Life isn’t like that — the heart cannot be managed in a detached sort of way (certainly not when we are young, when some of the most defining Arrows strike).  It feels more like an ambush and our response is at a gut level.  We may never put words to it.  Our deepest convictions are formed without conscious effort, but the effect is a shift deep in our soul.  Commitments form never to be in that position again.  The result is an approach to life that we often call our personality.  If you’ll listen carefully to your life, you may begin to see how it has been shaped by the unique Arrows you’ve know and the particular convictions you’ve embraced as a result.  The Arrows also taint and partially direct even our spiritual life.” –The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis & John Eldredge

“Back when we were growing up, we heard a lot of stories about the [Niagara] falls and the daredevil stunts people used to pull–like Annie Edson Taylor’s going over the falls in a barrel and things like that. One of the great legends of the town was French acrobat named Charles Blondin who lived from 1824 to 1897. He crossed over the entire width of the falls on a tightrope back in 1859. That must have taken nerves of steel since a fall certainly would have killed him. In fact he crossed the falls several times. He did it once with a wheelbarrow, another time blindfolded, and yet another time on stilts. They say he was quite remarkable. He continued performing even into his seventies.

One of the most incredible feats he performed was crossing the falls on a tightrope while carrying a man on his back. Can you imagine that? I guess just crossing over by himself wasn’t tough enough for him! But as difficult as that feat must have been on Blondin, I can’t help wondering how he got someone to go with him. That’s what you call trust: to climb onto the back of a man who is going to walk more than half a mile on a rope suspended over one of the most powerful waterfalls in the world.

I used to think about that as a kid. What would it be like to see the falls from up on a rope above them? And more important, what person would trust me to carry him across the falls the way that man trusted Blondin?”

The quote got me thinking a lot about trust.  I can say with absolute certainty that I’ve never trusted anyone any where near that much.  It’s a difficult thing to trust someone so completely that your life is (literally or figuratively/emotionally) in their hands.  Not so much because you fear the “death” but because you fear the crushing defeat that they might not be as trustworthy and/or understanding as you had hoped they would be.  As much as I miss (and someday soon hope to start getting back into) the on-going accountability of a men’s group, I wonder if I’ll ever reach the point in any relationship outside of that with my Savior in which I can trust someone enough to truly bare my soul and journey with them to the other side.

So here we go…the new and improved RavenBrook.net.  We’ll see if it gets any more attention from me than my old blog did.

If you never knew an enemy,
Oh, could you understand,
The worth of a friend?

While I think he is right that it takes having an enemy (or at very least a period of not having any friends) to really come to appreciate the value of friendship, I think it takes a whole lot more to come to understand the quality of a friend. I don’t think you can really know that until you have laughed, cried, played, worked, doubted, and worshipped with someone. Sixteen years ago in college I had a classmate who at the time I would have called a friend. But when we graduated, I fully expected to never see her again. But the Lord brought us back together here in Springfield about five years ago and since that time we have shared the experiences of life that have exposed the qualities of true friendship. I’m grieving with her this week a terrible and tragic loss, and the only thing that makes it sound bearable is knowing that — like me — she has several friends who have been tested and proven to be true and that she knows the Peace that passes all understanding.

Up until about the year 2000, I don’t think I really even started to comprehend how deep a relationship could go between friends. And until 2003 or 2004 I head never really had what I would now call a true friend. There were always the people I liked to talk to or hang out with or play games with or go to concerts with, but friends that I could share even my doubts and fears and sorrows with came much later in life. If you’ve only had “friendly aquaintenances” up until now I would like to encourage you to find a true friend — someone you can be open and honest with, someone you can share life’s ups and downs with, because sooner or later life will hit you broadside with something you can’t handle on your own — and all but your true friends will be gone.

The book starts out with this passage (which really hooked me):

“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Baghdad Theatre one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened.”

The book isn’t about Jazz, but there are a few references to it like this memorable passage:

“I was watching BET one night, and they were interviewing a man about jazz music. He said jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery. I thought that was beautiful because, while it is music, it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul … The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands.”
Instead the book is about how Christian spirituality fits into the “real world”. It’s about how to resolve in your own mind all those messy topics like denomination doctrinal differences, hypocrisy, and eternal damnation.

Speaking of which… I know some of my friends may be shocked/repulsed by the fact that I don’t believe Jesus spoke “King James” English or that every word in the KJV is a literal fact. Fact of the matter is that I happen to know that the KJV is a translation of the original which attempted to transpose all the original quotes of Christ (et. al) to synonymous words in a different language. In the same way, I believe that Jesus tried to translate spiritual/heavenly terms and concepts into terms and concepts that the people of his day could understand. That’s one of the reasons he was always telling stories and parables. One of the most awful places that the people of His day could imagine was the garbage dump (Gehenna) outside the gates of the city and beneath the hillside where the Romans crucified people (and where they often discarded their bodies). Here there were perpetual fires that never went out, worms, and pain/mourning/gnashing of teeth. I believe that Jesus was trying to convey to the people of His day that heaven was a literal place that they would go to after death if they were members of the Kingdom where they would enjoy the unending presence of God and all things good (a.k.a., the most wonderful place they could imagine, streets of gold and all that) and that hell was a literal place they would go to after death if they were not members of the Kingdom where they would suffer the unending absence/separation from God and all things good (a.k.a. Gehenna). Blue Like Jazz offers one such interpretation, and one of the best I’ve seen in modern language. It talks about an astronaut cast off from a space station explosion into orbit around the earth in a space suit that keeps him alive perpetually but no one comes to save him, no one talks to him, and even the beautiful sights of the earth and sun and stars are slowly and completely shut out by his hair growing throughout the decades and filling up his helmet until he his floating in complete darkness and isolation.

A purple sky to close the day
I wade the surf where dolphins play
The taste of salt, the dance of waves
And my soul wells up with hallelujahs

Oh praise Him all His mighty works
There is no language where you can’t be heard
Your song goes out to all the earth
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!
O hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!

After exploring this topic in my Adult Bible Fellowship, along with the topic of being ready to follow God’s wisdom (in contrast to the world’s), I was deeply challenged by another reminder from a visiting preacher in the morning worship service. Prayer isn’t exactly my strongest of skills/gifts. In fact, it is one I struggle with a lot. I’m overwhelmed when I hear stories of specific and dramatic answers to other people’s prayers, but disheartened that so many of my most heart-felt and important prayers have not seen similar responses from God. For example, last week our church’s prayer chain was circulating requests for prayer for a woman in our church who was going through the same tests, treatments, and setbacks as my wife had gone through before her death. I feel silly to admit it, but I honestly wondered a time or two if she wasn’t worse off having me praying for her no better off than my prayers were answered (in my limited view) the last time I was praying for that condition. And so when Russ Shinpoch from Branson took the pulpit today to share with us Simple Steps to Changed Lives in a lesson about prayer, I was reminded that God really does want to hear from me — even in this area which I feel so weak in.

Being in the Lord’s presence today was an excellent way to start the week. It’s going to be a busy week at the office that is going to require a dramatic change of my normal workday routine, which in turn is going to make it difficult to work out at the gym or spend my usual time in devotions. Which makes me all the more thankful for these early-in-the-week reminders of what the Lord wants from me each day.