Mary Oliver challenges me. She opens my eyes to a world of stunning glory, and yet a world I cannot fully understand. In the midst of life and death, she finds wonder, and remind me of my longing to live well.

The Kingfisher

By Mary Oliver

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
there are more fish than there are leaves
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher
wasn’t born to think about it, or anything else.
when the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water
remains water—hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.
I don’t say he’s right. Neither
do I say he’s wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry
I couldn’t rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

Wow. I missed April! Not one post. But I have been studying. I’ve been faciliating two different bible studies. Between working full time, working on various ministry projects and faciliating these studies, I have been in constant motion. I did finish some studies notes for 1 Peter – “A guide for dwelling in earthly places as
heavenly pilgrims.” These notes were developed for my own study but I started handing them out because I thought others might find them useful and now I’ve posted them. Unfortunately, I didn’t include a reference section (which I still need to add). When preparing this study I consulted JND Kelly, Ramsey Michaels, the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, and I prepared against the backdrop of NT Wright’s thoughts. Reading 1 Peter reminded me of the value of immersing ourselves in the stories of the Old Testament. When we don’t keep the stories fresh in our minds, we can easily lose teh wonderfully rich allusion present all throughout the text.

I am also faciliating a study on Galatians – “The Good News That’s Too Good to Be True.” I’ll post those notes when I finish.

I must say that I absolutely love study the Bible. Not to argue the texts; not to knock people in the head; not to garner spiritual brownie points–but to encounter the Word of God, the revelation of Jesus Christ. When the Holy Spirit quickens my heart to the presence of Christ, I am overwhelmed by His goodness. God is better than I could even imagine him to be.

BecomingMyself posted an amazing story about a young girl who paints breathtaking pictures of human faces, particularly images of faith. Her art and her faith are intertwined. According to a Christianity Today article, she began sharing visions about God and led the whole family in converting to Christianity.

“It wasn’t just art that was happening. Simultaneous with art was a spiritual awakening,” says Akiane’s mother, Forelli Kramarik. “It all began to happen when she started to share her dreams and visions.”Prior to that time, Forelli had been raised as an unbeliever, in an atheistic family from Lithuania.”And my husband was a former Catholic and did not share in the family beliefs. We didn’t pray together, there was no discussion about God, and we didn’t go to church. Then all of a sudden, Akiane was starting to talk about God.”

Forelli’s young daughter was homeschooled, she had no babysitters, and the family watched no television.”We were with the kids all the time, and so these words from Akiane about God didn’t come from the outside—we knew that. But there suddenly were intense conversations about God’s love, His place [in our lives], and she would describe everything in detail.”

Take a look at Akaine’s art and poetry: it is absolutely stunning. The Lord is good and His grace is overwhelming!

A friend handed me this poem recently. When I was typing it in tonight, I thought some other folks might enjoy reading it. This is by Jane Kenyon. For a wide selection of her poems, visit Poem Hunter.

Otherwise
By Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Stanley Grenz died over the weekend. His writing enriched my life and I am grateful to God for his life of faithful scholarship. For those trying to understand trinitarian faith in the midst of a postmodern milieu, he offered vital observations. May the grace of our sweet Lord Jesus surround his grieving family, and may he know the eternal embrace of a loving Savior.

The Coming of the Light
In chapter 2 of Heart of the World, Von Balthasar discusses “The Coming of the Light.” When the Word of God appears, he is the expression of love. When God comes to Noah, he comes in judgment, destroying the wicked. The world continues in its darkness and continues to hide from the light. But this time, as God draws near, He does not destroy but restores. “When God thunders, the cloud of wrath pours out a rustling of love” (38).

Von Balthasar introduces an idea that is worth further consideration and application, he suggests that the natural movement of all things is upward. He says,

What comes from below naturally strives for the heights. Its impulse presses on to the light; its impetus a seeking of power. Every finite spirit wants to assert itself and luxuriantly unfurl its leafy crown in the sun of existence. Whatever is poor wants to be rich—rich in power, in warmth, through wisdom and sympathy. This is the law of the world. For all things strive to pass from enveloped seed to fully developed life. The possible impatiently presses on toward form. The obscure must move towards the light through rubble and earth. (38)

In this movement, things collide. Part of the fall is the absence of harmony is the development of persons and things. We often try to occupy the same space at the same time: thus giving way to motivations and actions that are rooted in violence toward others. He continues,

And in this general onrush, creatures collide and place limits on each other, and these limits are movable in the play and strife over existence, and the borders between creatures are called customer, convention, family and state. (38)

Von Balthasar suggests that the movement beyond self is a good thing, a sign of God’s essential goodness, but the absence of harmony in creation turns this proper drive into the seeds for violence and corruption in human relations.
Because God is essentially complete, he does not move upwards toward completion. He moves downward not by necessity but by choice to reveal his love. Man’s voracious appetite seeks to consume the light of God’s love. Thus Von Balthasar can say, “The light came into the darkness, but the darkness had no eye for the light: it had only jaws” (39). Outside of redemption, even in the revealing of God’s love, man’s corruption subverts the goodness of God, seeking to consume the fountain of love in it ravenous lust. But the encounter with God’s love means death to our urge and a transformation into God’s love.

Man wants to soar up, but the Word wants to descend. Thus the two will meet half-way, in the middle, in the place of the Mediator. But they will cross like swords cross; their wills opposed to one another. For God and man are related in a manner far different from man and woman: and in no way do they complement one another. And we may not say that, to show his fullness, God needs the void, as man needs fullness to nourish his void. (40)

Von Balthasar proper clarification of this encounter maintains the distinction between Creator and created. This is not pantheism. This is the God who is complete in Himself, freely loving, freely embracing, freely transforming his creation. Love comes down to interrupt our ascent and turn us around. I think it is here that Von Balthasar makes an interesting distinction about our Trinitarian faith. Most religions are moving upward: even if they deny a creator per se they are moving beyond matter to immaterial (even atheism could be said to move beyond the particular to the universal). But the Incarnation embraces the particular. Listen again,

…instead of going past God’s Word in its descent and pursuing the rash ascent to the Father, we are now to turn around and, along with the Word, go back down the steps we have climbed, find God on the road to the world, on no road other than that by which the Son journeys on towards the Father. For only love redeems. There are not two sorts of love. There is not, alongside God’s love, another, human love. Rather, when God so determines and he proclaims his Word, love then descends, love then flows out into the void, and God has set up his claim and his emblem over every love. (40-41)

The problem is that even though human strives upward, they are closed to the true light. They turn from the light because they do not want their evil deeds to be seen by the light. “He beamed into the gloom, but the darkness turned away” (41). In a masterful metaphor, Von Balthasar describes the sin-filled world:

Closed and well-armored was the world against God from all sides, and it had no eyes to look out since all of its glances were turned inwards on itself. But its interior resembled a hall of mirrors in which the finite appeared refracted as far as the eye could see, multiplying itself infinitely and thus playing the self-sufficient god. Only the world’s gullet gaped outwards, ready to swallow down whoever dared approach. (42)

This is a war for God’s beloved creation. Sin has so corrupted the interior of the world that it is trapped in an abyss of self consumed lust. Its only hope is to be redeemed from the inside out: God will enter into the heart of His creation, exposing His love filled heart to all the powers of evil for only love can overcome this damnation. Here is an extended quote that captures the stunning beauty of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ:

And now God’s Word saw that his descent could entail nothing but his own death and ruination—that his light must sink down into the gloom—he accepted the battle and the declaration of war. And he devised the unfathomable ruse: he would plunge, like Jonas into the monster’s belly and thus penetrate death’s innermost lair; he would experience the farthest dungeon of sin’s mania and drink the cup down to the dregs; he would offer his brow to man’s incalculable craze for power and violence; in his own futile mission, he would demonstrate the futility of the wolrd; in his impotent obedience to the Father, he would visibly show the impotence of revolt; through his own weakness unto death he would bring to light the deathly weakness of such a despairing resistance to God; he would let the world do its will and thereby accomplish the will of the Father; he would grant the world its will, thereby breaking the world’s will; he would allow his own vessel to be shattered, thereby pouring himself out; by pouring out one single drop of the divine Heart’s blood he would sweeten the immense and bitter ocean. This was intended to be the most incomprehensible of exchanges: from the most extreme opposition would come the highest union, and the might of his supreme victory was to prove itself in his utter disgrace and defeat. For his weakness would already be the victory of his love for the Father, and as a deed of his supreme strength, this weakness would far surpass and sustain in itself the world’s pitiful feebleness. He alone would henceforth be the measure and thus also the meaning of all impotence. He wanted to sink to low that in the future all falling would be a falling into him, and every streamlet of bitterness and despair would henceforth run down into his lowermost abyss.
No fighter is more divine than the one who can achieve victory through defeat. In the instant when he receives the deadly wound, his opponent falls to the ground, himself struck a final blow. For he strikes love and is thus himself struck by love. And by letting itself be struck, love proves what had to be proven: that it is indeed love. Once struck, the hate-filled opponent recognizes his boundaries and understands: behave as he pleases, nevertheless he is bounded on every side by a love that is great than he. Everything he may fling at love—insults, indifference, contempt, scornful derision, murderous silence, demonic slander—all of it can ever but prove love’s superiority; and the black the night, the more radiant does love shine. (43-44)

Like a Trojan horse, love enters in the form of a human heart and once inside the gates of humankind, Jesus conquers the kingdoms of this world, revealing the kingdom of the heavens through obedient love. His heart of love overcomes the darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it. He takes the breach of sin and destruction into his own heart. Von Balthasar says,

For it is not ecstasy that redeems, but rather obedience. And it is not freedom that enlarges, but rather our bonds. And so it was that God’s Word came into the world bound by the compulsion of love. As the Father’s Servant and as the true Atlas, he took the world upon his shoulders. Through his own deeds he joined together two hostile wills, and, by binding them, he undid the inextricable knot. (55)

At the center of the world, this Heart brings God’s particularized love and grace to particular persons. It is not simply a universal restoration, it is the restoration of the the particular. “No destiny resembles another, and no grace is impersonal” (56). Just as a heart pumps blood to all its members, the Heart of God circulates love to and through each particular member of his creation.

Desert winds spread the blinding showers of sand, and bury me in burning blackness. Hot, dry air smothers my lungs as I choke down another moment of stark existence. Stripping away the facades of luxury, harsh landscapes reveal what will stand and what will fall.

The mountains that seemed invincible now topple, crumble and drift into an ocean of chaos. The stable world I thought existed never really did. All that I trusted is consumed in the endless sinking, shifting ground.

In the landscape of the soul, I’ve tasted the sweet death of desert life: again and again. The desert reminds me that man does not life by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Like a crying baby or a thirsty drunk, I suck the stone for one more drop of living water.

Radical trust in the goodness of God is my only hope. But whose god? Everyone has a god and probably several. Whom or what do I trust? Politicians? As G.K. Chesterton once noted, “It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.” Reporters? Everyday the spin changes with the wind—and the ratings. The latest preacher or guru selling tapes, books, new and better techniques, secret principles, or magic oil from their holy land?

Some days it seems as though everyone is selling somebody something. Including myself.

We’re all con-men try to convince ourselves and others that we are better than we are, smarter than we are, and deserve more than we have.

The merciful desert reveals our gods for what they are: hot air.

Into this barren world, love shines. Jesus reveals God—not as a door-to-door salesman pitching one more life changing aid with slick slogans—but rather a community of love. He makes the stunning suggestion that in the heart of the Creator is an unending flow of love. This personal, all-encompassing love embraces this world and all its pain.

Jesus comes to reveal God in our midst and takes our pain and our suffering and our agony onto and into himself. In the anguish of Calvary, he bears the breach of an aching world. In his actions, he reveals the lovingkindness or hesed of God. Again and again and again he embraces the weak, the oppressed, the outsider, the despised, the failure, the faker, the liar, the cheat, the broken.

In the desert, I realize my weakness: I face the hidden failure lurking in the shadows. The desert shines light into that abyss of my heart revealing a desperate darkness. Others might confidently trumpet their own perfected selves, but I cannot deny the dark struggles of a soul sometimes light and sometimes dark, longing for love but prone to hate.

In the desert, I cling to the only thing that is real: the lovingkindness of God. My only hope is the love of a Creator that sustains all things by His word. Radical trust in His mercy, empowers me to let go of the sloganeering, the salesmanship, the need to protect my turf or my reputation, the desire to accumulate, the insatiable drive for more and more pleasure.

Radical trust allows me to simply let go.

In the wind of His love, I let go. I let go of failure and success. I let go of praising and cursing. I let go and rest. And dance. And play.

And embrace.

As part of my Lenten mediations this year, I’ve been re-reading The Heart of the World by Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Even in translation, the force of his metaphors shapes words into images that pierce with heart with stunning clarity. I might try to jot down a few highlights that are cause for particular celebration.

Von Balthasar opens by focusing upon the thrust of the book, the cross of Christ at the center of all things. He says,

The very form of the cross, extending out into the four winds, always told the ancient Church that the Cross means solidarity: its outstretched arms would gladly embrace the universe. (13)

He quotes Cyril of Jerusalem, “On the Cross God stretched out his hands to encompass the bounds of the universe.” The cross is real power revealed in real weakness, and it reveals the love of God that beats as the heart of all things—anticipating and sustaining all things by his Word alone.

The broken body of Christ becomes the focal point of the people of God. And in Christ we who were not a people become a people. Thus the cross is at the heart of all restored relations: between man and God and between man and man.

In chapter 1, Von Balthasar highlights the despondent condition of humanity: “Prisons of finitude! Like every other being, man is born in many prisons.” In the fall, the cosmic harmony of particularity and universality collapse. All humans wander alone in their grief—longing for and resisting the restored bonds of relation. He says,

How far it is from one being to its closest neighbor! And even if they love each oter and wave to one another from island to island, even if they attempt to exchange solitudes and pretend they have unity, how much more painfully does disappointment then fall upon them when they touch invisible bars—the cold glass pane against which they hurl themselves like captive birds. No one can tear down his own dungeon; no one knows who inhabits the next cell. (19)

We as isolated beings long for communion, but we don’t live in a vacuum. We live in the endlessly moving stream of time. “The rigid ground under is already beginning to tremble and give way” (21). In one sense, all of existence appears in a flux. He says,

Are you grieving? Trust Time: soon you will be laughing. Are you laughing? You cannot hold fast your laughter, for soon you will be weeping. You are blown from mood to mood, from one state to another, from waking to sleeping and from sleeping again to waking. (21)

Time continues to swirl and move and nothing can stop it. “You cannot draw the river onto the dry bank, there to trap its imperative to flow, as if it were a fish” (22). “The wise among men seek to fathom the foundations of existence, but all they can do is to describe one wave of the current” (22). As Von Balthasar continues discussing the ever changing, transforming nature of time, he looks to the fact of our existence in this ocean as a sign of love. And the rhythm of the oceans of time might be likened to the beating of a heart, the heart of this world: the love of God. Beneath the ever changing flux of existence, beneath the seeming chaos of this world, is a love that cannot be denied.

You sense Time and yet have not sensed this heart? You feel the stream of grace which rushes into you, warm and red, and yet have not felt how you are loved? You seek for a proof, and yet you yourself are that proof. You seek to entrap him, the Unknown One, in the mesh of your knowledge, and yet you yourself are entrapped in the inescapable net of his might. You would like to grasp, but you yourself are already grasped. You would like to overpower and you yourself being overpowered. You pretend to be seeking but you have long (and for all time) been found. (29)

As long as we are blind to the hand of God that sustains and supports our every breath, we continue to struggle in the darkness like blind, drunk men. But when God in His grace opens our eyes to the presence of His love, the isolation of space and endless flux of time become the very realms where I rest in the endless flow of His love. I am his servant and He is Lord of all.

Last year I downloaded a bunch of lectures from the James Houston website and lately I’ve been re-listening to these lectures. Well into his 80s, Houston is a seasoned follower of Jesus Christ and offers the gentle wisdom that comes from years of following. A former Oxford Don, he helped start Regent College in the early 70s. He talks primarily on the spiritual life and while living in the light of the Reformers, he draws from the whole rich history of spiritual devotion. I think it would be worth your while to visit his site, read his writings and listen to his lectures.

Yesterday after church, a few of us went to our usual Sunday lunch spot: El Sazon. Michelle brought a friend, “Kirby” to meet us, and we immediately dove into a lengthy discussion on Wendell Berry, technology, and the challenge of living as persons created in the image of God.

This morning, I ran across an interesting essay that connects with this challenge of technology vs. persons about the New Media and the implications for values choices. Some of you might find it worth spend a few minutes reading. Media Determinism in Hyperspace. Note: the links to essay sections are at bottom of page.

Update: The author provides an interesting highlight of some the thinkers who have contributed to the conversation about the the impact and potential impact of technology in the human situation. Does technology makes us more or less human? This is mostly a quick overview but wortwhile for catching some of the highilghts of this ongiong discussion.

As I read, I was thinking about how Dumitru Staniloae interprets the Fathers to teach that God creates time and space as a realm when humans can enter into relationship with him and with one another. Sin thwarts this natural order and in turn time and space are no longer transparent to love but become opaque and actually block the light of love.

Update: That link for Staniloae led to other links that were dead or not in English. This link provides a little more background on the theoligan and his works. Staniloae