watch out for the iconic ones

I have been guided by this way of seeing, now for two years and 8 days. By windows and icons and crystal lenses.

In times like these I so sharply feel Ann Judson (AJ)'s chastening ache and borrow her form to confess:

My heart is bound up there; I felt he was my earthly all, my purest source of light, voice, warmth, protection in these dire straits. But God saw it was necessary of my error and strip me of my little all. Oh may it not be in vain that He has done it.

Ssstill?! Christ have mercy. In Adoniram's words:

O may we not suffer in vain! May this bereavement be sanctified to our souls! and for this I hope we have your prayers . . .

The danger of icons, of course, is idolatry. But how would I see through these stonewalls without a window? I do see You, so clearly through them. The iconic ones. Keep my focus there, let the lens fall away.

A man that looks on glass,

On it may stay his eye;

Or if he pleaseth,

through it pass,

And then the heav'n espy.

// George Herbert, "The Elixir"

give, feed, serve, receive, love, speak, clothe, wait. as unto Thee.

10. Resolved, to love fiercely but loosely: My friends are not my own. If ever I invest in friendship, to do so freely and charitably, not to buy or possess. If ever I embrace, to do so as to make space for, rather than engulf the other. I can love others, and forget myself, I can risk loss, because I am recollected by Love himself. 19 Jan 2015

16. Resolved, not to make idols of icons. Heart, don't turn good things into ultimate things. I will fail at this a thousand times; a thousand times I will fall at clay feet. A thousand times, help me fall, fail, return to kiss and wash Your feet with the truest tears of repentance. 17 July 2017

A Spring in the Desert: the Well of the Living One Who Sees

There is a particular desert I visit time and again.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

some souvenir stones

remember and be helped

Between Egypt and Philistia

These are badlands. I went––exiled by the ignorance of others or driven by their cruelty and dishonor only rarely. More often I have returned there to the familiar stench of vomit, withdrawing into a tempting habit of self-pity.

Deserts are fine places to visit. Not so great places to be indefinitely on the run and without adequate supplies. They can be treacherous if you're unprepared. Many have died in that wild. Sometimes deserved, for leaving safety in the first place.

But! there is a fountain there. Mercy.

Hope, hydration, a chance of surviving the desert, making it out.

I did not build the well. I did not name it first, though I know its name now, Beer-lahai-roi. It springs up in the depleting wilderness that is the feeling of being unnoticed and uncared for––hurting alone––in pain. A hideaway, a runaway, ashamed, invalidated. It is an incredibly disorienting experience; it is maybe untrue, but definitely felt.

There is fellowship there. With, at the very least, those who are drawn to the same desert spring. This on its own already begins to lift the you're alone nobody sees nobody cares lie –– because so many other people share in the fellowship of this suffering, feeling invisible or like they don't matter, like they or their pains are insignificant and unworthy of mention, that they ought not burden nor blame others but should bear it alone and struggle against wearing a chipped shoulder as a special badge.

Recently, I met a woman there.

She was fleeing. Toward home, maybe, safety. Away, at any rate.

And the angel of the LORD found her.

–– by a fountain of water in the wilderness,
 by a spring on her way to lostness.

He found her, intercepted her in her dishonor and panicked grief.

She was contemptuous and bitter and in flight.

And his first word to her:

"Hagar."

Seen, known by name. Not scorned, but sought:

Hagar, whence camest thou? and whither goest thou?

She said: "I flee. From the face of my mistress Sarai."

The LORD has listened to your affliction.

You will know this deep in your bones, in your blood.

The fruit of your body, the life that comes

out of what you thought would kill you

will be defined by God's hearing.

She named the LORD who spoke to her:

You are a God of seeing.

She, that exploited foreigner, fleeing her station, named the LORD!
God who names people was named by her, by her experience.
He drew near to her, to be experienced and known by her!
A spring in the desert.

You are a God of seeing. What a beautiful confession of faith.

She said, Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.

there is Fellowship here

And not just in the company of other outcasts, wanderers, exiles – though that is precious. There is the still-beating heart center of reality, that cosmic Christ, God with us.

Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. Mark 6:31

He meets me in the desert, every time, whether I go there to seek Him (escaping into Reality) or am just escaping from something else. Sweet to my secret heart is that living water. So I'm learning to Sabbath there intentionally and regularly, to that lonely place, to find that I'm not alone. There is an altar there where I can exchange the state of my heart for a fully sated one, and find not just the commiseration and consolation of others on the run.

But in lovely, brooding stillness, responding to come away my Love, resting with the only One who suffered alone, who wandered the wilderness and won over all its deadliness. To rest with Him, be alone with the Burden-Bearing, Safe, Hearing, Seeing One.

Self-talk:

Heart, never be tragic.

Live in His gaze, His attentive Love. 

Instead of licking your wounds, lift up your eyes.

See Him seeing you, be with Him as He meets you.

Return to the land of the living.

He shines His face on you.

So I stack another stone, to remember and be helped by Hagar. Years later when she looked away from the face of the Living God Who Saw her, He came to her help again. And He comes after me again and again, bids me come away with Him, nevermore alone. in Genesis 21.

to ravish & to lavish

"The world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through . . . Every separation is a link."

lavishing
ravishing
love

He said, "Fall on your knees before this place, in love, as before the place where lies the truth." I obeyed. 

He brought me out and made me climb into a garret. Through the open window one could see the whole city spread out, some wooden scaffoldings, and the river on which boats were being unloaded. The garret was empty, except for a table and two chairs. He bade me be seated. 

We were alone. He spoke. From time to time someone would enter, mingle in the conversation, then leave again. 

Winter had gone; spring had not yet come. The branches of the trees lay bare, without buds, in the cold air full of sunshine. 

The light of day would arise, shine forth in splendor, and fade away; then the moon and the stars would enter through the window. And then once more the dawn would come up. 

At times he would fall silent, take some bread from a cupboard, and we would share it. The bread really had the taste of bread. I have never found that taste again. 

He would pour out some wine for me, and some for himself–wine which tasted of the sun and of the terroir upon which this city was built. 

At other times we would stretch ourselves out on the floor of the garret and sweet sleep would enfold me. Then I would wake and drink in the light of the sun. 

He had promised to teach me, but he did not teach me anything. We talked about all kinds of things, in a desultory way, as do old friends. 

One day he said to me: “Now go.” I fell down before him, I clasped his knees, I implored him not to drive me away. But he threw me out on the stairs. I went down unconscious of anything, my heart as it were in shreds. I wandered along the streets. Then I realized that I had no idea where this house lay. 

I have never tried to find it again. I understood that he had come for me . . . My place is not in that garret. It can be anywhere––in a prison cell, in one of those middle-class drawing-rooms full of knick-knacks and red plush, in the waiting room of a station––anywhere, except in that garret. 

Sometimes, I cannot help trying, fearfully and remorsefully, to repeat to myself a part of what he said to me. How am I to know if I remember rightly? He is not there to tell me. 

I know well that he does not love me. How could he love me? And yet deep down within me something, a particle of myself, cannot help thinking, with fear and trembling, that perhaps, in spite of everything, he loves me. 

// from The Notebooks of Simone Weil (Arthur Wills' translation). 

Simone. She was a slave set free, like every saint, "singing what must certainly be very ancient hymns of a heart-rending sadness. Nothing can give any idea of it. I have never heard anything so poignant. There the conviction was suddenly borne in upon me that Christianity is preeminently the religion of slaves, that slaves cannot help belonging to it, and I among others . . ."

Simone. She is one of those women whose craziness offers me a comforting kinship. A traveling friend whose journals came with me to the restorative and serene radio silence of the Catskills this weekend. She is yet another wandering self-exiled Jew, with an itinerary away from the cathedral cloister, part of the fellowship of the excluded. A chosen outcast, whose psychological homelessness––whose marginalization––matters, bears weight, in all of her self expression. I met her after that August day eight years ago on which splaying out on the hardwood floor I was newly acquainted with my own poverty of heart. She was a balm–-and a caution––to my embattled mind, against the valorization of unnecessary suffering and against self-exclusion. Weilly weirdly wonderful and woeful.

To Bousquet she had written:

I absolutely cannot imagine the possibility that any human being could feel friendship for me. If I believe in yours it is only because I have confidence in you and you have assured me of it, so that my reason tells me to believe it. But this does not make it seem any the less impossible to my imagination. 

Because of this propensity of my imagination I am all the more tenderly grateful to those who accomplish this impossibility. Because friendship is an incomparable, immeasurable boon to me, and a source of life—not metaphorically but literally. Since it is not only my body but my soul itself that is poisoned all through by suffering, it is impossible for my thought to dwell there and it is obliged to travel elsewhere. It can only dwell for brief moments in God; it dwells often among things; but it would be against nature for human thought never to dwell in anything human. Thus it is literally true that friendship gives to my thought all the life it has, apart from what comes to it from God or from the beauty of the world. 

So you can see what you have done for me by giving me yours.

She was constantly Surprised by persevering presence, enduring friendship.

She came to me again in studying the resistance and inner liberty of women during the Holocaust. And I returned to her this weekend, grateful for her and for all those who've gone before me, to blaze the way.

Love Notices Wet Hair: On the Ministry of Noticing

What is sharp-eyed love?

When I was studying Attic Greek, I was transfixed upon the verb λανθάνω – I am hidden, escape notice. A word, a verb, that named my busy pain.

Ultimately it's a metaphysically impossible activity (Q&A11 of the First Catechism . . . He always sees me). Yet a falsely imagined but felt invisibility has so much been a part of my days and years.

* * *

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

// Simone Weil

* * *

Sister Girl,

This is an article I've returned to again and again over the years. It was written by a full-time college ministry worker.

Its contents are why I got weepy during our brunch with Ava, as she shared about the simultaneous love & loss that can overwhelm her when she thinks of her children while recalling her own mother. The same paradoxical lack & abundance burn me when I get to be part of a church that cares and provides for children, part of ministries for students, and wonder why I wasn't worth protecting and advocating for. How did I escape their notice?

In the end, Ava said, it is God who loves and raises and saves us, through poverty & plenty alike. In the end, it's so that I get to know and enjoy Him.

You strike a tender nerve there when you behave like you're invisible.

The necessity of the ministry of noticing, of seeing. And the pain of being invisible and unknown. After all, isn't this such a part of what Jesus did in so many of his gentle encounters with broken women? He spotted and saw them through and through and did not look away, turned all eyes on her, away from the person of power, onto the marginalized. I think, He knew what they needed. 

Q11: Can you see God?
A11: No, I cannot see God, but he always sees me.

Even when I fail to see/recognize Him, fail to see myself rightly. Even when nobody else noticed I was in need. He saw, knew. So we lack nothing. We are no longer orphans (nor were we ever). Thank you for reminding me. Have a great week!

EYL

* * *

Who am i that You are mindful of me?

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Esther

Date: Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:18 PM

Subject: 

To: boo friend

boo love,

I too was a lurker in churches once. I always attended, on the fringes. And would invariably end up feeling overlooked or unsafe. And I would leave in search of a city of refuge. I went to several churches over the years waiting for welcome from its people. Ended up feeling safe only if anonymous.

Liberation came with feeling seen/known by God. This quality was what I came to experience as Papa God's love. 1 Cor 13 stunned me, I couldn't believe the words staring at me from the Bible's pages... "For now we see dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." What? I was suddenly always Seen, and always Safe...

March 2011 Epiphany

Who then are the mourners?

The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God's new day, who ache with all their being for that day's coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence... The mourners are aching visionaries. Such people Jesus blesses; he hails them, he salutes them. And he gives them the promise that the new day for whose absence they ache will come. They will be comforted. The Stoics of antiquity said: Be calm. Disengage yourself. Neither laugh nor weep. Jesus says: Be open to the wounds of the world. Mourn humanity's mourning, weep over humanity's weeping, be wounded by humanity's wounds, be in agony over humanity's agony. But do so in the good cheer that a day of peace is coming.

// Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son.

Will you let a thorn in your flesh prick your heart?

Psalm 73:21

When my soul was embittered,

when I was pricked in heart,

I was brutish and ignorant;

I was like a beast toward You.

2 Corinthians 12:7

So to keep me from becoming conceited...

a thorn was given me in the flesh

...to keep me from becoming conceited.

How will I choose to see the hard providences in life, you know, those gifts I would rather return? Asaph in Psalm 73 and Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 lay out some options. As always these include the cynic's way and the scenic route. A nice wordplay from the musical The Fantasticks with Chris, Eugene, Iris the other night.

Embittered and conceited?

The weight of sin is blinding, it defaults to seeing by the eyes of flesh and blood, which can never see or inherit the Kingdom of God... To do so would be like allowing optical illusions to override what's really going on... Do you think that trapeze artist can actually fly? Are this life, this world, and their seasons permanent? Is that levitating magician really slicing up his assistant? Do the wicked really prosper scot-free? Foolish.

Or content for the sake of Christ?

With true vision learn to sing Asaph's song, "Truly God is good..." and with pure hearts, see the Father and the perfection of His gifts.

be Thou my vision Jesus...
one day nothing will distort Your image
and i'll see You face to face--
a truly beautiful and utterly beautifying sight.
one day there will be no other light but You, O bright Heaven's Sun,
and everything will be in its real form, whole and pure and true--
including my still deceitful heart that offers only half of itself in worship.
even today help me to see You in part,
and see everything by the light of Your presence.
let earthy gold grow dim, give me faith to live by,
give me Yourself; i can't trust my eyes.

luke 10.37

weak and wounded sinner
lost and left to die
raise your head for Love is passing by

// chris rice, on album "short term memories"

see Him there

go and do likewise.

Shrouded not Shielded

(Journal on 3/23/11)

It hurt to be invisible. I was shrouded by my silence, but not protected, though others were safely cloaked by me. I punished myself for the choice. And why shouldn’t I? I wasn’t worth noticing or advocating for, surely that was why nobody acknowledged me, not even when I was hurting. But wasn’t I silent because nobody had space for me? How then, did I have space to accommodate everybody? I was as destructive and distant from everyone and myself. Time passed and warped. I became needy and unrejecting, a black hole. Without matter. Didn’t matter.

If perpetrator and victim can’t coexist, why survive? One or the other has to be excluded from the community, so I thought. I chose to leave and survive, to be included abroad like I wasn’t at home. NYC worked, kind of. Everything was new, I was being renewed.

But constantly hitting the refresh button was also deleting my history. Which was fine—I wasn’t seen before, I might as well not have been there. But the hurt remained, proof that I had been there. So it was not fine. I had to keep moving, erasing, outrunning.

Mama Shiou was my traveler’s rest. In many ways she was telling me you’re not invisible. I see you. you’re safe here. you can be home. The world was not too far gone; I still felt real in this corner of it.

She died a year ago today. My safe place imploded. The only person who noticed a hurting child, and let her stay a child, stay and rest, was gone. I needed her. It wasn’t ugly as long as she was still in it. I needed to see her.

I thought I needed Mama Shiou. She knew I didn't. She wouldn’t have wanted that. She wasn’t telling me I could only exist in her presence. She was trying to free me, not bind me.

Mama Shiou. And Franklin, Sung-Ha, Josh, Michael, Irene, Rachel, Norman. I crouched and made a living in their shadows; harbour me. They’re not telling me to need them. They’re telling me I am safe in the world, or at least that I can be. And that the world isn’t too unbearable, as long as I can remain in it. I must let myself stay, in order to survive the ugliness.

She was telling me to rightly belong to and appropriately own the space wherever I went. To make it, if only a teeny bit, more beautiful and safe by simply being present.

I didn’t die with her. Here I am, see me. Hineni. Now, finally. I’ll tell you how I see me, how I believe my Father sees me, and you can decide what you do with it. But. I’m here. Deal with it.

This happened. Historically, it did. I happened. I won’t edit myself out anymore. Each of you who saw but ignored, and all of you who didn’t see when you should have, will now have to reckon with illusion and reality. Because, really, I’m here. I will be acknowledged. We’ll meet halfway as long as I decide to stay.

I’m sorry for letting you minimize me. I shouldn't have. But shame on you, for diminishing me to augment yourself. I won’t let you anymore—so that we both can fit into the community of humans. Maybe you aren’t to blame, maybe I exiled myself. Maybe I invited and enabled your monstrosity. Well, I’m going to find out which fears are real and which are imagined, and I’m going act as safe and seen as I am and have really always been in my Father's house--though I knew Him not.

If you refuse to listen, and I don’t think you will—I don’t think you’re the monster I feared. But if you refuse to open your eyes, that doesn’t make me invisible. And you will have failed me, not the other way around. I cannot count you a loss, because I never gained you. And I won’t concede space for you anymore, even—especially—if you would prefer I disappear.

You're beautiful.

o LORD, haste the day when my faith shall be sight
the clouds be rolled back as a scroll
the trumps shall resound and the LORD shall descend
even so, it is well with my soul

it is well with my soul

it is well, it is well with my soul

when we arrive on eternity's shore

where death is just a memory and tears are no more

we'll enter in as the wedding bells ring

Your bride will come together and sing

You're beautiful.