Love, save the empty, and save me. And save me. ~Erin McCarley Love Save the Empty
In other words, messy spirituality is the delirious consequence of a life ruined by Jesus who will love us right into His arms. ~Mike Yaconelli Messy Spirituality
It's been awhile since I've blogged but what can I say? The Wasteland consumed me and I've been sitting in it- wondering which way to go now.
Oddly, today I was reprieved of work for awhile and God has given me this time to do some serious reflection. Reflection on a very strange truth that has presented itself but one I think I've known. You see in the Wilderness you. Will. Get. Messy.
If you are opposed to sand and dirt might I suggest an entirely different religion. Sorry but Christianity isn't a neat religion contrary to several theologians beliefs. It's just plain messy. Christ was messy. He was not by the books, or the books the scary Pharisees kept throwing at Him. He was by the Lord...He is the Lord. 'Nuff said. All this and you read in Scripture Christ had messy feet. Sandy- dirty- and always need of cleaning. I think this was one giant metaphor for following Him that if you desire that life- be prepared. You will get messy.
The truth I've come to find is God's love for messy people. Not this cookie cutter Christianity that actually makes me embarassed to say I am a Christian but the real intense love God has for ALL people. Lately I've heard that people from churches treat the 'interesting' people of this world as if there is no room for them in God's house. First off, note the term God's house. It ain't yours. We are renters and who are we to say who is fit to come into God's house and who isn't? Secondly, Jesus kicked it with these people while He was on Earth. These were His crew... He'd prefer them over us. Did you ever stop to think about that?!?
Seriously.
And all those Bible heroes- those Israelites in the Wilderness- now there was a messy people. Idols, murder, disobedience, whining, complaining, and just plain annoyed. They were God's chosen people and I wonder if at some point God just didn't want to say, "That's it! If I hear one more word out of you I am calling this journey off and sending you all back to the Pharoah and let him deal with you!!!" I doubt God would have done this- Him being the master of patience and all but you still wonder...
I am a messy person. Literally and figuratively and especially in the Wasteland. It's probably why I love Mike's book so much and though I have read it a 1000 times, I cry and I learn and I laugh all over again. God speaks so many truths to me through it about who I am and how much He loves me- even as a messy person.
As a Wasteland Adventure Guide, I want, scratch that- I need to share this truth with others. The God who loves the messiness and the empty. The God who loves the imperfect and cares for all. The God who is bigger and better than the Christians. The Wasteland is not a place I am by myself; it's where God is and I know He is with me. Where He richly and daily blesses me and I am nothing more or less than amazed.
The Wasteland is messy and it is a place for this messy spirituality. It's place where you can see Jesus' footsteps better than ever.
~The Messy Wasteland Adventure Girl
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The Wasteland Adventure Girl's Guide to Quotes (#1)
*I am a quote/lyric addict. I have tried to quit many many times before but to no avail I cannot. I love words of wisdom from other people and the more clever and snarky, all the better. In the Wasteland, wisdom is important- learning from it even better. Here, quotes matter. So I will be sharing them on occasion as I come across ones I love. :)
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Home is the place where when you have to go there they have to take you in.
~Robert Frost
The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.
~J.K. Rowling
Forget for a minute what the real world looks like, forget what you know, sometimes you need to believe in what isn't exactly there. A daydream of better nights. A storybook fantasy where life is ordered and consistent and tales get awfully exciting before they wrap up nicely for all involved. Who are we to enforce reality? After all, you never know when the good angel of fortune might bring a page from your book to life and throw a kind of miracle your way.
~"Everwood"
Strange how hard it rains now/Rows and rows of big dark clouds/When I'm holding on underneath this shroud/Rain.
~"Rain" by Patty Griffin
Time marches on and sooner or later you realize it is marchin' across your face.
~ Truvy from "Steel Magnolias"
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Home is the place where when you have to go there they have to take you in.
~Robert Frost
The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.
~J.K. Rowling
Forget for a minute what the real world looks like, forget what you know, sometimes you need to believe in what isn't exactly there. A daydream of better nights. A storybook fantasy where life is ordered and consistent and tales get awfully exciting before they wrap up nicely for all involved. Who are we to enforce reality? After all, you never know when the good angel of fortune might bring a page from your book to life and throw a kind of miracle your way.
~"Everwood"
Strange how hard it rains now/Rows and rows of big dark clouds/When I'm holding on underneath this shroud/Rain.
~"Rain" by Patty Griffin
Time marches on and sooner or later you realize it is marchin' across your face.
~ Truvy from "Steel Magnolias"
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The Wasteland Adventure Girl's Guide to Dancing (Part Uno)
I use to feel bad for over-analyzing life. I use to feel as if by somehow listening to an incessant conga-line in my head about the issues within my life, I was perchance missing something. Or you know, at least in possession of another mental disorder. Worst case, I just might be that pathetic.
I don't feel that bad anymore when I came upon the realization today, that I am not the only one. Books, film, and movies- at times- are simply well-stated over-analizations of life. It is just clever enough for you to miss this---and not coy enough to always be unaware of it. Directors, writers, producers, actors and so on all see life in which the medium they participate in- they over-analyze through it and thus the incessant conga-line of thoughts for someone else becomes a smash hit starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
I see life in dances.
Honestly, I am far far from an accomplished dancer. But if you ask me where I think God will employ me in Heaven, my hope is in the dance team. There is something I find in dance- absolute freedom and courage maybe- that I find in very little else. My technicality is atrocious and I am limited by my experiences in dance but I just don't care. It's like being a writer and having no clue how to use spell and grammar check. You write as you do and if it doesn't follow the tried and true rules, seriously? Who cares?
I see life in choreography. Carefully planned and executed movements to a rhythmn, beat, and lyrics. It all works together to allow someone to feel music through the occular senses. I was in the habit of telling the girls I worked with in Devotion in Motion (*Our church liturgical dance ministry at my hometown congregation...) that what we do is give the message of the music of God to a deaf world. They can see and if that's all, we become the way for the power of the song to be seen and felt on deaf ears.
This is how I see my life. Dancing. You may be the best trained dancer in the known world or you know on So You Think You Can Dance... but you are not above falling. No one ever is. It happens to the best. A simple misstep and you are on the floor in complete humility and embarassment and doubt that you can get up and continue the dance.
But you will because like any good dancer knows, if you make a mistake keep going and there is a chance the audience will never know.
I keep dancing.
I say all this because today I have an irksome feeling that the life I have been dancing for the past two and half years has been... less than what God would have. To feel like a failure is just possibly the hardest reality to face in the Wasteland. It's an issue of proving yourself to God and yourself and then, others. I see the movements I made, the steps I took, the music I heard and I wonder why God was...I guess, moving me as He was. It doesn't seem all that great or grand or freeing.
But in dance, you learn to be led. It's an issue giving up control but you understand Someone knows the movements better than yourself. Someone sees the whole dance, where as you are only learning a part of it now.
I am being led.
I am dancing in the desert and I'm not sure how this goes...
~Wasteland Adventure Girl
I don't feel that bad anymore when I came upon the realization today, that I am not the only one. Books, film, and movies- at times- are simply well-stated over-analizations of life. It is just clever enough for you to miss this---and not coy enough to always be unaware of it. Directors, writers, producers, actors and so on all see life in which the medium they participate in- they over-analyze through it and thus the incessant conga-line of thoughts for someone else becomes a smash hit starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
I see life in dances.
Honestly, I am far far from an accomplished dancer. But if you ask me where I think God will employ me in Heaven, my hope is in the dance team. There is something I find in dance- absolute freedom and courage maybe- that I find in very little else. My technicality is atrocious and I am limited by my experiences in dance but I just don't care. It's like being a writer and having no clue how to use spell and grammar check. You write as you do and if it doesn't follow the tried and true rules, seriously? Who cares?
I see life in choreography. Carefully planned and executed movements to a rhythmn, beat, and lyrics. It all works together to allow someone to feel music through the occular senses. I was in the habit of telling the girls I worked with in Devotion in Motion (*Our church liturgical dance ministry at my hometown congregation...) that what we do is give the message of the music of God to a deaf world. They can see and if that's all, we become the way for the power of the song to be seen and felt on deaf ears.
This is how I see my life. Dancing. You may be the best trained dancer in the known world or you know on So You Think You Can Dance... but you are not above falling. No one ever is. It happens to the best. A simple misstep and you are on the floor in complete humility and embarassment and doubt that you can get up and continue the dance.
But you will because like any good dancer knows, if you make a mistake keep going and there is a chance the audience will never know.
I keep dancing.
I say all this because today I have an irksome feeling that the life I have been dancing for the past two and half years has been... less than what God would have. To feel like a failure is just possibly the hardest reality to face in the Wasteland. It's an issue of proving yourself to God and yourself and then, others. I see the movements I made, the steps I took, the music I heard and I wonder why God was...I guess, moving me as He was. It doesn't seem all that great or grand or freeing.
But in dance, you learn to be led. It's an issue giving up control but you understand Someone knows the movements better than yourself. Someone sees the whole dance, where as you are only learning a part of it now.
I am being led.
I am dancing in the desert and I'm not sure how this goes...
~Wasteland Adventure Girl
Monday, December 8, 2008
The Erama and Me...
Your friendly Adventure Guide here...
I have decided to outsource this blog for several reasons.
The first being it is much easier to blog on a blog site than Facebook. The second being that not everything I write will be made completely and totally public. The third being is that I really like Blogger. With my defense of outsourcing, I will now get down to business.
I was in Church yesterday where I do believe God was speaking to me. (*No, I'm not hearing voices nor do I have in my possesion a God-phone, just the message and His word hit home. Hard.) The pastor was preaching on the first part of Mark- the story and life of John the Baptizer. He informed the congregation that the Greek word for wilderness is erama. Now, those of you who have read the basics of the Wasteland Theology know that wilderness and wasteland are interchangeable and dependent on the idea that this season or 40 years is like that of the Israelites.
I really liked that word. Erama. Say it with me, 'Erama.' It just sounds cool and somehow makes the whole thing about being in a searing hot desert full of sand and bugs sound nicer. I equate it with when people say they can't do something and you instead tell them of things they can do without ever really agreeing with them- which you did though.
So the Israelites were in the erama, as would be John the Baptizer. And the whole point of John camping out there in the wilderness was this: it was a return to closeness with God. Seriously. The whole point just floored me and you know cue the lightbulb over my head. It never occured that being out here in the Wasteland was all about returning to the closeness I once had with God. Apparently when God's people were in the desert that is where God was directly with them. He was there-there. He was in their faces, in their lives, providing for them, punishing them, loving them as close as He could be. When John the Baptist came into the world and returned to that place, he was informing God's people that it was time to return to the closeness they once shared in the wilderness. And how much closer can you get to God than being in the presence of His Son, Jesus?
It hit me that this time is a time to return to being in God's presence. I just thought that not working in the church anymore would be about the furthest I could get from God.
EH! WRONG!
I think it is a time to return to remembering how present He is in my life. I am coming to some hard and scary truths about reality and Doubt, well stupid crook, is trying to rob me everywhere I turn. Funny thing is- the moment the scary thoughts come creepin' in, God's there proving Himself faithful...again. I wonder if God shakes His head at me in the attitude of, 'Come on, haven't we been here before? I am just that great and big.' I'd be shaking my head at me.
The fact for this Wasteland Girl is this- God is close.
I went to a concert last night and they sang this song, Breath of Heaven. (*This song had me in tears. I was in choir at my first school for a lot of years and this song was a standard for us every Christmas. It brought me around to the memories of my choir director, an amazing talented teacher named Mr. Morkert. I heard that song and thought of what he taught me and how much I missed learning from him. And that was just bitter and sweet...) The whole song is about Mary's life and her insecurities about being the mother of the Christ-child. It's also about the closeness of God- His very breath upon her. Writing about it is making me chill...it's powerful. Mary returned to the Wasteland. She was younger than me, younger than most teens I know, and she was walking in this place where she had to be full of doubts and heart breaks and frustration. She was full of all this and yet full of the presence of God. The breath within her was in some part Him, too.
I am in the Wasteland and God is not further away-He is even closer than before.
Take that, Doubt.
~Wasteland Adventure Girl Who Now Loves Christmas Music
I have decided to outsource this blog for several reasons.
The first being it is much easier to blog on a blog site than Facebook. The second being that not everything I write will be made completely and totally public. The third being is that I really like Blogger. With my defense of outsourcing, I will now get down to business.
I was in Church yesterday where I do believe God was speaking to me. (*No, I'm not hearing voices nor do I have in my possesion a God-phone, just the message and His word hit home. Hard.) The pastor was preaching on the first part of Mark- the story and life of John the Baptizer. He informed the congregation that the Greek word for wilderness is erama. Now, those of you who have read the basics of the Wasteland Theology know that wilderness and wasteland are interchangeable and dependent on the idea that this season or 40 years is like that of the Israelites.
I really liked that word. Erama. Say it with me, 'Erama.' It just sounds cool and somehow makes the whole thing about being in a searing hot desert full of sand and bugs sound nicer. I equate it with when people say they can't do something and you instead tell them of things they can do without ever really agreeing with them- which you did though.
So the Israelites were in the erama, as would be John the Baptizer. And the whole point of John camping out there in the wilderness was this: it was a return to closeness with God. Seriously. The whole point just floored me and you know cue the lightbulb over my head. It never occured that being out here in the Wasteland was all about returning to the closeness I once had with God. Apparently when God's people were in the desert that is where God was directly with them. He was there-there. He was in their faces, in their lives, providing for them, punishing them, loving them as close as He could be. When John the Baptist came into the world and returned to that place, he was informing God's people that it was time to return to the closeness they once shared in the wilderness. And how much closer can you get to God than being in the presence of His Son, Jesus?
It hit me that this time is a time to return to being in God's presence. I just thought that not working in the church anymore would be about the furthest I could get from God.
EH! WRONG!
I think it is a time to return to remembering how present He is in my life. I am coming to some hard and scary truths about reality and Doubt, well stupid crook, is trying to rob me everywhere I turn. Funny thing is- the moment the scary thoughts come creepin' in, God's there proving Himself faithful...again. I wonder if God shakes His head at me in the attitude of, 'Come on, haven't we been here before? I am just that great and big.' I'd be shaking my head at me.
The fact for this Wasteland Girl is this- God is close.
I went to a concert last night and they sang this song, Breath of Heaven. (*This song had me in tears. I was in choir at my first school for a lot of years and this song was a standard for us every Christmas. It brought me around to the memories of my choir director, an amazing talented teacher named Mr. Morkert. I heard that song and thought of what he taught me and how much I missed learning from him. And that was just bitter and sweet...) The whole song is about Mary's life and her insecurities about being the mother of the Christ-child. It's also about the closeness of God- His very breath upon her. Writing about it is making me chill...it's powerful. Mary returned to the Wasteland. She was younger than me, younger than most teens I know, and she was walking in this place where she had to be full of doubts and heart breaks and frustration. She was full of all this and yet full of the presence of God. The breath within her was in some part Him, too.
I am in the Wasteland and God is not further away-He is even closer than before.
Take that, Doubt.
~Wasteland Adventure Girl Who Now Loves Christmas Music
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