This is the beginning. I feel it's time to bring voice to some of disquiet in my soul. Last night I went to a show, to see a band that has been significant in voicing some of my fears and feelings, hopes and hurts. It was an epic night of music - one of the most intense shows I've seen I think. It's been a tough last while for a number of reasons, and last night I had a realisation that I'm in need of both sides of this blogs title. Dismantle:Repair. So many attitudes of indifference, acknowledging my brokenness, and my fallen-ness, all the ways that I've overcomplicated, and undervalued who I am, and who I'm becoming. I'm not sure I understand all that I'm wrestling with at the moment, but this idea of dismantle and repair best sums up this tension. I feel like I'm fighting and falling, control and abandon, wanting and waiting... these are tensions that don't always fall evenly, with the pendulum swinging in somewhat chaotic rhythm.
These paradox are fueled by questions: What is it that you want? What do you desire, and why?
I have been reading a great book by John Eldridge called "The Journey of Desire"
Here's some stuff from it that resounded with me:
"Contentment is not freedom
from desire, but freedom
of desire. Being content is not pretending that everything is the way you wish it would be, it is not acting as though you have no wishes. Rather, it is no longer being
ruled by your desires...The fact is, at this point in our journey, we have only three options: (1) to be alive and thirsty, (2) to be dead, or (3) to be addicted, There are no other choices. Most of the world lives in addiction [some less obvious then others], most of the church has chosen deadness. The Christian is called to the life of holy longing. But we don't like to stay there A.W. Tozer perceived that "there is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess" And why do we seek to possess? So that we do not have to live in thirst, trusting our hearts to each day to the goodness of God. To live in thirst is to live with an ache. Every addiction comes from the attempt to get rid of the ache. How is it possible to satisfy an insatiable desire? Merely trying sets us on an unending chase that leads us farther and farther from home.
What hope feels like: Waiting and groaning.
Romans 8:24-25 "That is why waiting does not diminish us, anymore than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy" (
The Message) There is actually a sweet pain in longing if we will let it draw our hearts homeward.
"...How can we live without groaning? If we do not give our ache a voice, it doesn't go away. It becomes the undercurrent of our addictions. Pleasure becomes necessary in larger and larger doses, like morphine."
"The paradox of grief is that it is healing, it somehow restores our souls, when all the while we thought it would leave us in despair. Control is the enemy, grief is our friend. "
"Solomon said that it is better to go to a house of mourning than it is to a house of feasting. I never understood this, I wrote it off as the pessimism of a depressed man. Now I think I know what he meant. Grief is good. It is cleansing. It undoes my world-and that is the best part of it. I need to be undone, simply undone. No regrouping. We need to mourn, it is the only way our hearts can remain both free and alive in this world. Why? Because it, like nothing else, puts a stop to the constant striving. Grief is the antidote to the incessant possessive demand with."
That's puts words to some of the emotions and feelings I've been having...for...who knows how long. So much of that is stuff I understand as concepts but haven't found the outworking of them in my life. I feel like I don't and still am not very good at dealing with grief and loss, with some of the tragedies that i have faced even just this year. Just this week I had been fearing that I'm waiting for the tragic news, my brother doesn't call back - I'm freaking that he's had a car accident on his trip back from Darwin to the remote community where he is working... I'm realising that God is in control, and I can't hold onto or protect anyone from anything - God gives, God Takes away, Blessed Be Your Name...
Worship and trust is what I need learn and live. Eldridge writes "I believe that we must add two spiritual disciplines to everyday life. The first is worship. We must adore God deliberately, regularly. The other is grief. We must allow a time for sorrow to do our own personal sowing. I see no other way to care for our hearts.
Our pleasant experience may be the result of the thousand distractions that fill our waking moments. Kierkegaard said that despair has become so rare not because the human race is suddenly doing better, but because
we so effectively push it away. This is the "sickness unto death," to despair without ever despairing, to mourn without ever mourning.
We had a moment where grief sneaked up on us just last night at Anberlin show. The last track of their new album "Cities" is called "(*Fin)" which was the final song of their encore.
As i stood there holding my friend in this moment, both of us acutely aware of our loss, and longing, yearning and hoping. I felt this question come from deep within, "God could you show me what it means to come alive, while I still have life."
"(*Fin)"
Feels like you're miles from here,
in other towns with lesser names.
Where the unholy ghost doesn't tell
Mary or William exactly what they want to hear.
You remember the house on Ridge Road
told you and the Devil to both just leave me alone.
If this is salvation, I can show you the trembling.
You'll just have to trust me. I'm scared.
I am the patron saint of lost causes.
Aren't we all to you just near lost causes?
Aren't we all to you just lost
Tommy, you left behind
something that will mean everything right before you die.
What if you gained the whole world?
You've already lost four little souls from your life.
Widows and orphans aren't hard to find.
They're home missing daddy who's saving the abandoned tonight.
Wish your drinking would hurry and kill you.
Sympathy's better than having to tell you the truth.
That you are the patron saint of lost causes.
All you are to them is now a lost cause.
All you are to them is now, causes.
Billy, don't you understand?
Timothy stood as long as he could and now
you made his faith disappear.
More like a magician and less like a man of the cloth.
We're not questioning God.
Just those he chose to carry on His cross.
We're no better, you'll see.
Just all of us, the lost causes.
Aren't we all to you just lost causes?
Are we all to you lost?
Lost causes
So all we are to you,
Is all we are, is all we are
All we are is all we are
[Choir:]
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you? (Lost causes, all we are is all we are)
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you? (To you, lost...)
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?
Patron Saint, are we all lost like you?
Take what you will, what you will
And leave. Could you kill, could you kill me
If the world was on fire
and nothing was left but hope or desire
And take all that I could bring forth, is this hell
Or am I on the floor over-desperate?
Hold hands streaming of blood again?
And then take full weight of me
Guard my dreams, figure this out,
It's me on my own. Helpless, hurting, hell
Will you stay strong as you promised?
Cause I'm stranded and bare.
Meanness is washed up in all that I am
is God. Take this and all,
Then grace takes me to a place
Of the father you never had
Ripping and breaking and tearing apart
This is not heaven
This is my hell.
We love you and miss you Josh, and am longing to know the Hope that you have found.
