"The Intimacy Container"

   Tonight we tackled "the big one" at the Hub, again. Sex, sexuality, God's intent for it, our society's craze around it, and just plain anything associated with the letters S-E-X have been all over the place in February 2012. This time though, I found Charlie and Heather Ruce (the speakers; a husband and wife who are both counselors working with Soul Care House) full of awesome information, equipped with candid but deeply compassionate voices, and indebted to what they were sharing concerning God, healing, and their own stories for the lives (and marriage) they live now. I also deeply appreciated that they didn't mask the topic with too much humor (this is a pet peeve of mine; oftentimes, if a speaker is incredibly funny, once you get past the laughs, what was said is confused or pretty surface level.) They made sexuality a real topic and a topic that we shouldn't be uncomfortable talking about by being comfortable but also being real.

   I had a feeling things were going to go well when Charlie started the night defining sexuality for us, not as simply "genitals, orgasm, you know, SEX" but as our deep human selves that long for intimacy, wholeness, union, and bonding. This is how I have come to understand myself as a possessor of God-given sexuality, as a sexual being who is not yet supposed to be engaging in sexual acts. I, before marriage, in relationship or out of it, am still as sexual a woman as I will be within a marriage; my sexuality is a part of my identity and is much more than my decision to or not to engage in sexual activity, who I want to be sexual with, and how.

   In pursuing this topic further, between the sermon and our seminar tonight I read an excerpt from Philip Yancey's book Rumors of Another World in which Yancey takes a really human look at sex in the world and at how it might have actually been meant to be. Within this he quotes an author I am now very intrigued to read:

"The human being is constantly straining towards this infinity: a thirst to be filled, to be recognized in one's uniqueness, a thirst to be free, to be loving, to be a source of life for others... Our thirst is infinite but it is carried in fragile vessels." (Jan Vanier,  Man and Woman He Made Them.)

 This straining towards infinity is a beautiful way of illuminating aspects of the whole idea of our sexuality. Sexuality is much more than sex. If we can understand it in its wholeness, sexuality becomes far more beautiful, pointing to deep centers of our selves and beyond us to the divine, far more important, as it is an aspect of the reflection of God, and far more daunting to encounter, understand, heal, and live. We live in fragile vessels. Charlie and Heather took it a step beyond our personal fragile vessels to our relationship dynamics, where our individual fragile vessels seek to merge with others and create "intimacy containers" in the form of relationship.

  Intimacy is meant to be part of the human condition, a beautiful part. But any moment in which we open the box of intimacy and vulnerability, we also open the door to the messy. We cannot seek to merge our lives with another completely separate entity, alone in our own selves as we are, without tension, strain, awkwardness, discomfort, and probably some pain. Because intimacy is fraught with mess, the Ruces point out that it really needs a special place to dwell. In order for intimacy to not simply cause pain and heartache, we need to open to it within a container that is built for the purpose, a container of commitment that is large enough to handle the levels of intimacy that are being breached. They were specifically talking about physical intimacy at the time, but my own heart was struck by how true this is for emotional, spiritual, and conversational intimacy in my life.

   I have a bad habit of getting myself into a position where I have been much more vulnerable with another person than they are, or desire to be, with me. I desire deep connection, authentic relationship, and real conversation so I just go for it, almost all the time. Many a time this has created unbelievably amazing friendships, encouraged others to open up when they otherwise would have remained reserved, and overall been a pretty dang awesome wreaking ball for the Holy Spirit to throw at the fortress walls barricading souls from sunlight. But there are other times, and let's be honest, cross-gender times (yes, that means with you, men), where my penchant for vulnerability meets with confusion, uncertainty, manipulation, or outright rejection.

   Years ago, I found myself in "fake relationship" after "fake relationship," giving vast amounts of time, emotional energy, and intimacy to guy-friends without asking for, or demanding, any sort of commitment or definition on our "friendship." Much of this (I have recognized over much thought and prayer) came from my own history that predisposed me towards having low expectations in relationship ("don't ask for anything, it only causes problems, go with the flow, simply give") and my own fears, which led me to "wait" for the guy to want more, to define it, to "ask me out," all the while digging myself deeper and deeper holes of emotional attachment. (Now let me tell you, these men were there own kettle of awesome brokenness which I, in retrospect, am slightly horrified to have poured myself out over, but brokenness and abandonment seeks affirmation where it can find it, even if its self-created and completely misplaced. )

   Where am I going with this? The container of commitment is the only place in which intimacy can live without perpetual fear of abandonment. And unfortunately for fearful hearts (mine), containers need to be verbalized. Fortunately, for all hearts, Jesus makes the best container of all.

   We were made to share our hearts. Man and Woman compatible with each other so that only in pairing are we completed. And yet, even in that pairing, we are only able to reach a secondary level of completeness in this life. Complete wholeness waits upon union with our God which we cannot experience still living in this world. But we're lucky, because with Jesus, we have the opportunity to be just that close. After Christ's ascension, the Holy Spirit was given to us, as counselor, best friend, mediator and intercessor. God literally dwells within the bodies and minds of his people. Great, you say, that ought to make my completeness then, right? Wrong. (And seriously, if I made that claim, you'd know from your own experience of life that I'm only lying.) In some way, this having of the spirit only increases our longing for union with another. How better to experience God than for two pieces of him to come together, a heart meeting a heart, through intimacy and vulnerability, the spirit within me and the spirit within you communing?

   This is where that container becomes necessary. Suddenly, because of Jesus, I literally have an ability to interact with my God by interacting with the heart of another human. We get to partake in community with Jesus on a daily basis. But this communion in intimacy is still fraught with the potential tearing and pain that baring yourself to another ever has. This is where Heather and Charlie challenged me tonight. My desire to meet my spirit with the spirit in you is God given and beautiful. But without open words, real determination, and explicit commitment, that wreaking ball has more potential to completely cripple us than anything. This is why, in a vulnerable space like a life group, we covenant with each other. Explicit, verbal commitment to trust, confidentiality, compassion, and support.

   I am challenged now to pursue explicit verbal commitment in my individual relationships before barreling in with my vulnerability-crane. Before I give you a piece of my soul, do you intend to receive it and love me? "What are your intentions?" And what are my intentions? (I, too, have not only felt the hurt of my intimacy being manipulated or taken for granted, but have accidentally caused pain with it by seeming to establish a depth of relationship that I did not intend.) We have to be careful where we bare our souls. Simply knowing within our own minds that we do it in the arms of a compassionate Father who will always receive and love us no matter the outcome is not enough. We must be verbal with each other.

   I find myself at once incredibly liberated and stone terrified by the implications of these things.

On Restoration and Surrender

I have no words.

Actually, I have too many words. I could sit here and spill them out, knowing that I committed to writing and posting as a discipline for Lent, but I find that a better thing tonight would be to step into surrender. Unexpected reconciliation of the most brilliant kind wants to wrap my brain up tightly, running around like a child in a candy store, a chicken with its head cut off, and all the other bad cliches. My mind wants to unwrap this surprise gift and spend hours and hours dwelling upon it, picking apart details and possibilities and explanations.

But I want you to have it, Dad. It came from you, anyways. Help me hand it into your keeping so that it may grow instead of stifle in the grasp of my obsessive brain processes. You're the best keeper of precious things anyway; I want you to have this.

And, Dad? One more thing.

Thanks.

On Poems

Today I wrote an email that turned into a poem.
Another email was poetic, but quite on accident.
Both, accidental,
actually.

Where do they come from,
words that paint and sounds that dance and punctuation that speaks on its own?
It's been quite a while since I've written a poem.
It's been so long,
in fact,
that I thought I forgot,
Thought I'd lost it together with age and with living better.
Thought it had gone the way of teenage angst and RPGs,
of stories written for different Me's.

But there it was,
sitting on the screen,
And here it is again...



It's funny though.
I've still forgotten.
Poems don't sound beautiful
after they've been written.

Have you ever played with one of those toys at the Discovery Channel store (or basically any gift shop) that are basically a plastic tube full of liquid and sparkles that you can squish around and it slips over and over itself? They kind of remind you of a sea cucumber for some reason? And when you were a kid it was fun to stick your arm all the way through it? And you could squelch it around and around and it would just keep turning itself inside out?

Did you know that a heart could feel like one of those? I didn't either.

Who We Are

"The psalmist would say that the riddle of [man] is hidden in the mystery of God. Only faith can envision the point of convergence. Humankind recognizes itself fully only in the recognition of the Being from whom all reality arises. The claim of the psalm is that we can say "human being" only after we have learn to say 'God.'" -James L. May on Psalm 8

   For my final hermeneutics paper, I'm writing on the imago dei, or the image of God. This means that about three weeks ago I started spending an inordinate amount of time reading about, learning about, and thinking about what it means to be human and in what way we might reflect God. Specifically, I'm confronting a verse in Genesis that states "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, in his own image," causing me to believe that I, in fact, was not born in the image of God humanity was originally created to bear, but instead was born in the image of Adam. 

   But wasn't Adam made in the image of God and thus the image he passed would be likened to passing on that very image? 

   What if it wasn't a "fall" that made evil occur on the earth, a serpent's tempting that opened pandora's box, or a woman's weakness who unleashed the first sin that doomed us all? What if, instead, the simple act of taking from the tree of knowledge of good and evil thrust a knowledge we were never meant to bear inside a vessel that simply was not made for such a purpose? And because of that ill-fit, the vessel was cracked, misshaped, melted, warped. And then two of these vessels came together and made a new one, in their own image. Would it be the image from before, or the only image they could see now? 

   I digress, though.

   I believe the Psalmist has the key to the "what is it to be man?" question. In order to establish myself, to discover what these sinews and neurons and water molecules all add up to besides a big hulking mess, to look inside of brain jumbled with bright flashes of joy and deep pits of despair and see vocation, calling, and glory, I must first look to my father. I must find this one who created me, originally if nothing else, to be made in his image. I am made of stuff that once, at least, was a mirror to him. And I believe I am being remade into that mirror. But to know my materials, to know what they even have a chance to add up to, ought I not look instead of within my own clay, to the foundry from which I was drawn? I want to learn to say "human being." 

   Lord, help me learn to say God. 

Psalm 25/43

My eyes are ever on the Lord, only he will release my feet from the snare.
Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish.
Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins.
See how my enemies have increased and how fiercely they hate me!
Guard my life and rescue me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.
Send forth your light, Lord, and your truth, let them guide me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.

Why so downcast, O, my soul? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

I put my hope in you, my God, for in all, I will yet praise you. 

Mysteries in Tradition

Yesterday at Flood we gave a nod to church tradition, celebrating "Ash Sunday" (instead of Ash Wednesday) by giving our congregation an opportunity to have their foreheads marked with a cross of ashes. Growing up Lutheran, I've participated in Ash Wednesday services nearly my whole life and thus really appreciate that Flood incorporates this tradition into the beginning of the Lenten season.

However, sticking a short explanation to the end of a sermon not specifically related to Ash Wednesday, lent, fasting, repentance, etc, then telling everyone "okay, go" doesn't really... work.

On Ash Wednesday, each individual is marked with ashes upon their forehead accompanied by the invocation "Woman/Man, from dust you were created, to dust you shall return." This is a pretty dang somber tradition if you ask me. Why are you smudging charcoal on my forehead? I thought we were getting ready for Easter, why does it start with reminding me I am as chaff in the wind?

I recently re-read my "Lent is beginning" blogpost from last year and was reminded of my own adolescent confusion at the ashen forehead crosses. "One year in middle school I ran to the bathroom between walking to school and attending first period so that I could smudge my own cross on my forehead, the charcoal art pencils in my backpack replacing the symbolic ashes. I had no idea what the point was, but wanted to be dedicated enough to be one of those weird kids with the ashes on their foreheads all day. Or at least I wanted people to think I was that dedicated. What was the point in having Pastor smudge ashes on my head at all if the only people that were going to see it were the ones who I already went to church with anyway?" No one gave me any indication that there was something more going on than looking like a weirdo trying to play pre-princess Cinderella, picking my meaningless fast item, and "looking forward" to Wednesday night soup dinners which functioned as a further excuse to escape from my parents.

In Israel, when a time for great fasting or repentance would come on a person, he would tear his clothes and throw ashes on his head, or, as Job, sit in ashes all day long. Doing this was an outward physical sign of the spiritual humility within: in comparison to you, Lord, I am ugly and as humble as those who must sit in the ashes (the crippled, outcast, etc.) I disfigure myself so that your glory is all the brighter. I take from my day the consciousness of my own glory, walking about with my head downcast that you might be known as the marvelous one and not myself.

Now, Jesus teaches that we are now to go about fasting so that our outward appearance does not draw attention to ourselves (many "religious types" during Jesus's time were loudly fasting and disfiguring themselves so as to draw attention to their good religious deeds, effectively doing the opposite of what wearing sackcloth and ashes was meant to do: propping up their pride rather than manifesting deep humility.) Further, because of Christ we are called to recognize ourselves as beautiful and radiant, reflections of God's glory. But on Ash Wednesday we remember the tradition of wearing ashes to display a repentant heart, a heart that recognizes that even in the state of resurrected heir, our enemy seeks our destruction and our flesh runs amok. Even as a reborn creation, a brand new child of the King, clean and white as snow, I sin; we all do it--choose away from God, be it in big stereotypical no-no sins or in misdirected thoughts and spiteful minds. On Ash Wednesday we recognize that we want to be more, want to fully be that child and that resurrected saint, and display our humility in that we cannot accomplish this as ourselves by smearing our foreheads with ashes.

We remember that if it were not for God, we would be no more than dust, and to dust our worldly bodies will return. The great news is that we get to look forward, 40 days (plus Sundays) from now to the triumph of Easter. And in the triumph of the cross, the return to dust has been obliterated. We are freed, forever, from the binding of death and the descent into oblivion. 

On Ash Wednesday, we recognize that if it were not for God, we would be literally nothing. But with God, we get to dance and shout and sing and cry; the Joy of the World dwells within us, and we have to mourn no more. 

Ever have those nights when everyone who knows you looks concerned and asks if you're alright, when you thought you were before they all started asking?

There's a point at which when people start to think you're just brushing them off by pleading exhaustion, you begin to wonder if you actually are alright.

But there's blessing in the concern, for all that. It all stems from love, after all.

Valentine's Day

It's kind of unbelievable; the time I spent thinking about the fact it was Valentine's Day today (very little) was legitimately entirely taken up with hoping that I would get to see, hang out with, love on and be loved by my life group. And then the boys gave us candy and playdough with little Valentine's cards, some of us ducked out of the main Hub event to have a really powerful prayer time followed by simply hanging out with each other in the dark (Sarah had a migraine), Lisa wrote me an incredible note while praying for my aunt's sister, and to top it all off, at the end of the night Dan made me cry with a text message which simply said "How are you?"

Then I watched Beastly (which I've been tried to identify in photos, finally found, and really enjoyed) and half way through the credits I started sobbing.

Was I lonely? Mourning the fact that I had no significant other to treat me on Valentine's day?

No, actually.

I was bawling because it hit me that I am loved so much better by my life group than by any of the things I have ever imagined or wanted a boyfriend to do to/for me. I mourned, in that I realized for all that I may have had a crush or two these last few years, I have not even come close to understanding the depth of the kind of relationship God actually wants for us. I mourned my superficiality, my unambitious desires, my failure to really take God up on his promises, even just in my own heart. But through the sobbing, my face was split with a maniac grin and I choked on my air as I laughed out my tears, because I want none of it like I want my Fugees. I have never experienced being loved like they love me. I'm not sure I've ever loved like I love them. (I know this all sounds pretty dramatic, but I can't find another way to put it.) The work that the Holy Spirit has been doing, hand-picking each of us to stitch together this hodge podge of people who desperately need each other, to love and to be loved by, shatters my equanimity every time I stop to think about it.

In the fact of love like this, who has the energy, time, or desire to mourn for a bouquet of roses and a fancy dinner date? Sorry, future hubby, God's given you some really big brother-sister shoes to step in to.

What's great is that I know you can fill them or you aren't meant to be. Because God created me (us!) for this kind of loving, to be able to pour out my entire heart into people knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it will be slathered back onto me multiplied by a hundred-fold, even when that wasn't the point to begin with! Because, you know what? That's how HE is. That is who He is.


How the hell did we get so lucky to have a God like this one?

Got my first real seminary assignment back today; 100%.

Things I think about that:

• I care too much about my grades. (Because I am legitimately stoked about this 100%.) 
• It's kind of unfortunate that I can pull a 100% in a graduate program on a 2-day reading of a book. 
• What do you do when you're told "I don't have any comments on how you can improve"??? (Answer: work on harder things than a book review!) 

Ending thoughts: What would my work be like if I actually started it ahead of time like I should? (Answer: I tried this in undergrad and actually did worse on all my papers that I started reading for way ahead of time. sigh.)