Justice

Since when is being a Christian give everyone else the right to assume we are door mats? Simpletons to be walked over, trampled upon and dismissed? Since when is justice something that Christians are not supposed to advocate for? You cannot have forgiveness and mercy without presupposing the need for justice. Too often Christianity is associated with passivity. "Sit down, shut up. We do not want to hear from you, we do not want to be admonished," cries of a relativistic and demoralized people. Their indifference cries out to the heavens to be reckoned with and we would be amiss to not admonish the sinner, especially those closest to us. Trying to push the "nice Christian" persona is trying to eviscerate the gospel. Jesus did not die the shameful death of the cross for being nice. The apostles were not passive, indifferent and ashamed to proclaim the truth regardless of the repercussions in their own lives. Christianity is such a tour-de-force specifically because it is such a threat. It threatens our comfort, our relativism, our very selfish ways of thinking and acting. You cannot be a Christian and be silent in the face of such amazing arrogance and vitriol. Stand up! Fight! Do not be ashamed! Many Christians have gone to their deaths in the public square, who am I to refuse to go to my own death in the square of public opinion?

Frail

It has been well over a year since my last appearance on this blog, the circumstances of my life have changed dramatically, and yet, at the same time they have not. I have become a better person, and yet, at the same time I have become a worse person. My heart is heavy and weak and cold and... frail. The nights seem to haunt me with questions formed in the very center of by being. Questions that shake me to my core and further illustrate just how fragile and broken I am. Questions like:

Is my faith truly living?

Am I capable of loving anything or anyone beside myself?

When will my soul find rest?

The days, as providence would have it, do not seem to bode much better. Every day I return to a church that simply drains me. I can feel myself becoming more distant, more indifferent, more angry. I recognize my ultimate inability to change anything, the cogs in the machinations of jaded ministry continue to turn without a moment to consider anything other than its own foreordained drudgery that slowly buries it into its own sepulcher. 

Hours blend seamlessly into days. Days blur into weeks. Weeks fade rapidly into months. I cannot escape this foreboding sense that there is simply something that I am missing. Something that is not currently holding sway over my heart, mind and soul. Where is God?

The other day I was just sitting and thinking about all of the good things I have in my life. A wonderful woman, a regular paycheck and a better community. All of it though seemed like straw as I began to feel that creeping doubt call to me, "Where is God?" I am so frail, and I am so weak, and I fear that staying in ministry will only further continue the destruction of my faith. I want a heart back that gives everything to God. I want to just give up control but, from where I sit and looking ahead, I am much afraid. God has become a business associate alone in only a few short years. The hypocrisy is not lost on me, in fact, it compounds my guilt and feelings of emptiness. 

So, I sit here, typing into a blog that has not seen any interaction in a long while, and I cannot help but feel like God as well has not interacted with me in a long while. I am owing up to my brokenness, and once more, I invite God into my frailty. 

Peace

So, something incredibly exciting has recently happened in my life! I recently started dating a wonderful woman! Things just have fallen together so flawlessly in this past month or so that we've been talking, it's crazy to think about how radically my life has shifted within the past month and a half from where I was.

She and I met, went out on a date, and decided that we're giving this relationship thing a try. I cannot quite express the incredible cocktail of emotions that are bubbling up in my soul over-and-over in a thousand different ways, the best thing that I can express is quite simply this: peace. Every other relationship that I've ever tried to engage, I've found myself worrying, stressing, becoming anxious, wondering when time will "run out" before I'm left with a shattered heart once again. This one is so incredibly different. I don't worry about whether or not I'm attractive enough/ funny enough/ engaging enough with her, I just feel at peace whenever I think about her or am with her. It's ridiculous. This time it's been a complete trust in God, and finally, for once, I can legitimately say that I trust in everything that He is doing between us. We have handed ourselves over to His divine mercy, and we're trusting in Him.

I'm so at peace with her, I'm falling so incredibly hard for her. When I'm with her, I feel like I'm home. Jesus, we trust in You!

45 Days

I had a super-surreal experience last night. I was watching, "How I Met Your Mother." Admittedly, it is an absolutely terrible show, it's my trash television series that I don't admit to a ton of people that I watch. I've slogged through 7.5 seasons of Ted Mosby's story of trial-and-error in how he met his wife, and this one scene may have made the entire 7.5 seasons worth it. The premise of the episode is that Ted is deciding what to do on just another ordinary week night as the story unfolds he imagines what his future self would tell him about what he was up to that night. It culminates with him (or at least, a future version of him) running to the apartment of his future wife and making this speech. It's so heart-wrenching for me to watch because as I've been watching the story of Ted Mosby unfold, I realize that in a lot of ways I identify with him. I simply want to find someone that I can grow old with. The reality is though, I never know when I may meet the future Mrs. Hyland. It could be 45 minutes from now, 45 days from now, hell, even 45 years from now. I don't know. What I do know is that what Ted did and that speech he made resonated with me on a deep level. I mean, if I could get even 10 seconds with her right here, right now, I'd trade everything I have just for that. I want to be able to love her, with all that I am, unreservedly. I want it so terribly, and I hate being as sentimental and sappy as I am about this, but it's true. Whatever time I may have with whoever she is, I just am afraid will not be enough. I want to love her even now.

If that's the case, if I really want to love her even now, I need to change some things that are happening in my heart. I need to uproot some things that have resided within me for too long. I want to make myself right so that when I meet her 45 minutes from now, 45 days from now, even 45 years from now I'll be able to give her all of my heart unreservedly, completely, holding nothing back. Loving her begins now, and I think the gravity of that has finally sunk in.

Silhouette

So, I bought this song a shade over a year ago, I had heard it out on the radio somewhere and I was just taken with the guitar at the beginning. As I listen again to this song tonight, I'm simply struck with how heavy and beautiful and terrifying it is all at once. The clash of emotions that this song elicits within the very depths of my soul reminds me simply what it means to be human, what it means to love, what it means to be in touch with the reality that there is more to life than my the demons that haunt me. 

This song paints this beautiful picture of love in the turmoil of the storms of life. When things get rough, the chips are down and two people encounter the reality that all else is collapsing around them, there just needs to be someone there to catch them. This song paints a picture of love, love that is true love, a love that doesn't fly away with the difficulties, the type of love that sticks together through thick and thin, up and down, good and bad. The love that he's singing about here, is a love of the will.

As I look at the people around me getting married, having children and things of this nature, I have had to do a bit of soul searching to take honest inventory of who I really am. I have been forced to ask the tough question: am I capable of a love of the will? Am I capable of looking into the eyes of one woman for the rest of my life and being able to say honestly, "I am here, like a lighthouse for you, in the storm." I of course have to come to the conclusion that I am not capable of it on my own, I'm simply not. God, however, can do great things, even with a bruised, battered and broken person like myself, even make me capable of having that deep love of the will.

The key to this though, is that this type of love is indeed gracious, or, that is to say, a love that shows and embodies divine grace. This type of love I cannot have or possess on my own, however, Christ can choose to strengthen my will, can call me up to something greater, and give me someone to share that gracious love with.

For now, I simply wait.

Review

I was looking through my blog posts from the past couple years and I was saddened by what I saw. There was a lot of hurt, a lot of anger, a lot of doubt, a lot of self-loathing and what scares me the most is a that there was a lot of hopelessness. I mean, how did I go from a place where I was content and happy in community in college to wanting to leave the Church in a matter of only three short years? I'm back in Phoenix now and I'm beginning to feel just the slightest hints of hope bubbling up within me. Do I need therapy? Yes, probably. Are there still lots of issues that I have to wrestle with? Demons I have to face? Absolutely. The key though is to remember that life isn't all valleys of sorrow, there can be rivers of joy.

Just this past week my best friend in the whole wide world had a baby! As I look at the pictures and heard his excitement, I knew that there was something amazing happening inside of him, something incredible that didn't just remain with him, but has even come to interact with me. This joy in the simple reality of life, of here and now, that there still are good things in the world. If I was to be completely honest with myself I would have to admit that I let that vision slip away from me. I came to doubt and question that reality, when all I was confronted with was anger and wrath from my co-worker and there was little to no positive support at all, no wonder my psyche became so fractured and broken. 

Yet even through the darkness, the rough patches and the heartache, God is still gently walks along side us in this deafening rhythm of life. He is constantly calling us to Himself and is never going to give up the fight. This is simply Who He is. God, I'm ready to be delivered from my darkness and brought to a river of joy once more. Come Holy Spirit.

Attire

"Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting in punishment." -Joel 2:13

I just have to write this because I need to get it off my chest. I hate when people get up in arms for attire at mass. Do not misunderstand, I'm not advocating for people to be able to walk into mass in bikinis and revealing outfits, but what I am saying is that when people get so caught up in dress that attire becomes a focal point, that's what I take issue with. I understand that the mass is where heaven meets earth, where the God of the universe makes Himself present in the holy Eucharist, and guess what, the beauty of Divine condescension is that God meets us where we're at. I go to mass in jeans and a shirt because that is who I authentically am, that is who I want to invite God into. When people make clothing such a huge fuss, it does not come off as a desire for a more intimate encounter and show of honor to God, it comes off as, "why are you not fitting my preconceived notion of what's appropriate?"

I was at mass this past weekend and an older gentleman came up to me and shook my hand sternly and proceeded to tell me off for my attire. He said, "You know this is the house of God, and you come dressed here like this?" I wanted to respond with everything I had, "I'm pretty sure that God cares more about the interior disposition of my heart than adhering to a notion of 'Sunday appropriate' attire." Jesus says to the Pharisees in scripture, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of filth." (Matthew 23:27). Make no mistake, modesty is necessary and an indispensable requirement of the liturgy, I'm not arguing for that here. What I AM arguing for, however, is an authenticity in approach to the liturgy. I come to mass as who I am, a broken, human individual in search of a true encounter with the living God, not a dressed up, empty appearance version of myself. I'm asked, "Don't you dress up for weddings?" my response is, "I do, begrudgingly, I can't wait for weddings to be over to change out of that asinine clothing." My desire, is to come to God in authenticity and openness, not in pride and an empty tradition of, "appropriate."

I would rather make sure that my heart is open, torn and ready than to appear at mass in an empty suit with no love. That, I believe, is what God cares about, not clothing.