Carolyn Arends

It Was a Holy Night (Lyric)

Carolyn Arends — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:04:50 -0800

As I've mentioned before on this here blog, my church and I have a mutual tradition of having me write a new Advent song each year for our Christmas Eve service. I think we are 13 or 14 songs into the adventure now. I've spent the day laboring over the newest song, which is not quite ready to endure exposure to the blog elements yet. But I rediscovered last year's song in the process, and thought perhaps I would share it with you. So here it is.

It Was a Holy Night

(Christmas 2007)

O, little town of Bethlehem
I think it is a lie
That you were still or dreamless
On that first Christmas night
‘Cause you had soldiers, and politicians
Over-crowding in your streets
And there was chaos, and human cruelty
And never quite enough to eat
And then the baby came
And when the baby came …

I think he cried the way that babies do
I think his mama might have cried a little too
I bet you Joseph didn’t have a clue what to do
He was new at fatherhood
So I don’t think it was a silent night
I kind of doubt that all was calm that night
But there were those who heard about a light
Saw the sight and they understood
It was a holy … It was a holy
It was a holy night

O, when the herald angels sang
I bet they thought it odd
That such a poor and broken place
Should be a home for God
And did they gasp to see him shiver
Cold and hungry in our skin
Did they tremble, did they wonder
How we deserved a gift like Him
Oh, but just the same
The baby came …

I think he cried the way that babies do
I think his mama might have cried a little too
I bet you Joseph didn’t have a clue what to do
He was new at fatherhood
So I don’t think it was a silent night
I kind of doubt that all was calm that night
But there were those who heard about a light
Saw the sight and they understood
It was a holy … It was a holy
It was a holy night

Well if his hope shone in your darkness
Maybe it can shine in ours
And if his love came in your chaos
Maybe it is never far
Even in our pain
Cause when the baby came …

c 2007 Running Arends Music/ASCAP

Twitter as a Spiritual Discipline

Carolyn Arends — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:30:31 -0800

Doest thou Twitter?*

As is my way with internet fads, I greeted the Twitter craze with a world-weary "What's the big deal?" ... only to try it and find myself rather instantly hooked. I particularly like the fact that 3rd party apps allow me to enter a Twitter update and have it appear on my facebook, myspace, and newsblog pages, keeping my presence on the internet fresher than it has been historically.

Doesn't that sound all marketing-ish and sensible? The truth is, it's really fun. Trying to sum up what's going on in your life at any given moment in a pithy 140 characters or less is an entertaining challenge. And watching your friends do likewise is enjoyable too.

I've gotten so into Twitter that I've even read a few blogs on how to do it well, from hardcore tweets like Third Day's Mark Lee and Thomas Nelson's CEO Michael Hyatt. Blogging guru Darren Rowse even has a new blog (TwiTip) entirely devoted to the tweeting art.

Most of the discussion revolves around exploiting Twitter's marketing potential. But I'd like to put forth an alternate raison de' twitter etre (with my apologies to the French language): Twitter can be a great discipleship tool. Seriously.

I'll be honest, I didn't sign up for Twitter in order to grow spiritually. Such a possibility never occured to me. Let's call my Twitter adventures "The Accidental Disciple". But I have discovered that the discipline of regularly accounting for both my physical and mental whereabouts has been remarkably useful spiritually, in at least the following 4 ways.

1. Twittering forces me to attend to the moment.

As one who is chronically distracted by the worries and wanderings of my interior world, I've found Twitter surprisingly helpful in anchoring me to the here and now. The basic Twitter question is "What are you doing?" Essentially, that's one of the questions any spiritual advisor (from monks to pastors to your bible study buddies) should be asking: "What are you doing?" It leads rather naturally to some other important questions, like "Is that what you should be doing?", "Do you mean to be doing it?" and "Are you doing it well?"

2. Twittering forces me to detect the good in my day.

I'm in the midst of the most challenging season of my life to date. Both of my parents are critically ill, and I've had the great honor of trying to serve them by helping with their care. It's the least I can do--they are terrific parents and it's nice to have an opportunity to give back a little--but it is very wearying to watch people you love suffer.

Occasionally, I mention what is happening with my parents in my Twitter updates (more on that in a minute). But if every update was on this consuming aspect of my life, my tweets would be dreary indeed. So, very often when I open my laptop to post an update, I have to sift through my life for something funny or interesting to post. I almost always discover that, lo and behold, funny and interesting things-- even joyful and moving things--are still happening in the midst of my dark time. In this way, Twitter helps me focus on the sorts of things Phillipians 4:8 suggests we focus on. (I think it's OK to add "whatever is goofy" to the Phil 4:8 "whatever is lovely" list -- especially if it helps me to "consider it all joy".)

3. Twitter forces me to engage in community.

I know that in this net-driven age there is plenty of concern about cyber-community replacing real relationship. But I must confess that Twitter has kept me more connected with many of my friends than I have been in ages. And, in the midst of my aforementioned difficult season, knowing I can post a prayer request or an honest revelation about the state I'm in and be instantly prayed for and supported is extraordinary. It doesn't replace real time in a real church or coffeeshop, but it sure is a nice bonus.

Twitter also keeps the lives of my tweeting friends before me, helping me to extend the boundaries of my world beyond my own burdens and reminding me to pray for them as well.

4. Twitter forces me to think of my life as a story.

I recently heard Donald Miller give an excellent talk in which he challenged each of us to ask: "If my life were a movie, would it be worth watching?" His idea is not so much that we all need to be in more car chases or torrid romances, but rather that our lives need to have God-sized quests, directions and purposes.

Posting regularly on Twitter challenges me to take stock of how I am spending my time, thoughts and emotions. Is there anything going on in my life worth mentioning? Am I staying alert and vigilent for the hand of God and reporting on it? Am I, to paraphrase Eph 5:16, redeeming the time I'm given?

Twitter can, like all other things, be simply a waste of time, an avoidance tool, or a mindless distraction. But it doesn't have to be. God has a long track record of using most anything for His purposes, and I can testify that the One who made the birds that tweet outside my window can use Twitter for His glory. Go figure!

*For the un-twitterpated, here is Wikipedia's definition: "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length." It is currently sweeping the nation(s) and is particularly popular amongst internet marketers and techno geeks. (See The Newbie's Guide to Twitter for more info.)

Our Shalom Vocation - A Different Sort of Campaign

Carolyn Arends — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:20:05 -0800

My latest Christianity Today column is now online. It's an exploration of what Jesus might of meant when he said "Blessed are the peacemakers", and it's strongly influenced by a course I took on the Sermon on the Mount with Darrell Johnson at Regent College.

Most of the comments the piece has received so far seem to be processed through the filter of the recent US election. The column was in no way a comment on the election -- the editors require me to submit my columns three months ahead of publication so this was written in early August. And as a Canadian I had no dog in the US fight (although Canadian lives are certainly affected by our neighbours.)

I think, though, that both the good and bad of the recent campaign support my underlying theory: Shalom (God's defintion of peace) is more than stopping conflict, chosing the right leader, or making the right treaty. Shalom is a gift of God, and it becomes a reality only when we begin to acknowlege and discover who we are in him. But the awesome thing is, Jesus said that when his kingdom started breaking into our lives, we'd get to help him make Shalom. Sweet.

Anyway, here's the piece. Lemme know how it hits you.

Our Shalom Vocation , November, 2008 (CT)

Peacemaking is more than not making waves.

I loathe confrontation. I am sometimes called a "peacemaker," but the truth is that I have always been easily pacified by a counterfeit peace that is really more about not making waves than about right relationship. At the other extreme, I've watched assertive friends make pseudo-peace by the sheer force of their persuasive personalities.

Neither the passive nor the aggressive route brings the kind of peace Jesus had in mind when he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Real peace is not just about the ceasing of conflict (between relatives, ethnic groups, or nations); it's also about dealing with underlying causes. Be it the Middle East or the middle of my family room, there are forces of evil at work, manifesting themselves as greed, ego, insecurity, and sometimes aggression.

The problems are infinitely complex; my default response is to shrug my shoulders in low-grade despair. But I know better. I know that Jesus not only desires peace, he is peace. And he wants us to be not only its recipients but also its agents.

There is a scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian in which Jesus is delivering his Sermon on the Mount. A woman at the back can't quite hear, and when Jesus intones, "Blessed are the peacemakers," she asks, "What's so special about the cheesemakers?" To which her husband replies: "Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products."

It's a ridiculous exchange, but given the context in which Jesus delivered his sermon, I doubt his audience would have found "peacemakers" any less absurd than "cheesemakers." For centuries the Israelites had been promised a messiah to rescue them from a long line of oppressors. When Jesus started teaching, healing, and even resurrecting people, hopes must have soared. I can imagine Jesus clearing his throat, the locals holding their breath as they waited to hear his plan for overturning Roman rule. What a shock it must have been when he opened with, "Congratulations when you are poor in spirit," built to a focus on making peace, and closed with, "How wonderful when you are persecuted."

Jesus' audience was getting a crash course on one of his core messages: The kingdom of God is near—breaking in, alive, active—and it's nothing like you think. Two thousand years later, we have cross-stitched Jesus' words and hung them docilely on our walls, but his real message is no less counterintuitive or shocking.

The Beatitudes are not a tame to-do list of "be-attitudes." They are descriptions of what happens when the kingdom breaks into—and revolutionizes—a person's life. And each of the first six beatitudes builds toward the seventh: Kingdom people will be peacemakers.

Shalom, the Hebrew word for "peace," has expansive connotations. It means harmony, wholeness, and right relationship with God, others, self, and the earth. Isaiah offers prophetic pictures of shalom: the wolf lying with the lamb, weapons turned into farming tools, deserts blooming. Julian of Norwich must have glimpsed shalom when she said, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

Jesus promises that kingdom people will be not just shalom lovers or even shalom keepers, but shalom makers. God wants to include his children in the family business. Peacemaking is a mandate each of us is called to live out inside our own skin and circumstances, whether we work for the UN or not.

Mrs. Gagner, my daughter's first-grade teacher, is a prime example. She tells her students daily that God loves them, that he knows their names and has plans for them, that they are gifted and valuable beyond calculation. I have watched God use her to make shalom in those little lives. Multiply 26 students per class by a 30-year teaching career, and you start to grasp the staggering effect of just one aspect of one woman's life.

Mrs. Gagner would laugh if she knew she reminds me of a 19th-century Russian priest named Father John of Kronstadt. Most of his fellow clergymen refused to visit the villages that surrounded their cathedrals—chronic poverty had fostered a debauched despair that made the rural areas treacherous. But Father John would enter the slums and get down in the gutters. He would find some guy sleeping off whatever he had done the night before; he would cup his chin, look him in the eyes, and say, "This is beneath your dignity. You were created to house the fullness of God." Wherever Father John went, revival broke out, because people discovered who—and whose—they were. Shalom is contagious.

Preacher, teacher, homemaker, cheesemaker. Whatever our vocations, we are here for a reason. God's kingdom is at hand, breaking in, offering the job opportunity of a lifetime. We get to help him make shalom. Anything less is beneath our dignity.

Bigger Than Both of Us (Story of a Marriage)

Carolyn Arends — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:21:19 -0800

Recently, Today's Christian Woman asked me to write a piece on marriage in any direction of my chosing. I was stymied for quite a while as to what to focus on, and then realized I was stalling because I was afraid of the vulnerability required to really write what was on my heart. So ... I drank a good, stiff, Diet Pepsi and wrote the following. (It can be found in the November/December issue of TCW or online at their website.)

Bigger Than Both of Us
How my view of our marriage was radically shifted

For the first several years of my marriage, I was fond of paraphrasing C.S. Lewis on the difference between romantic love and friendship. "In The Four Loves," I'd tell whoever might (or might not) be interested, "Lewis points out that friends stand side by side and look out at the world, while lovers stand face to face and look at each other." I often cited this concept in support of date nights; there's nothing like candlelight and a little eye gazing to bolster a marriage.

But time, as the song says, goes by. Eventually, I found myself wondering just how many years of marital experience C.S. Lewis actually had.

Don't get me wrong, Lewis is still my literary hero. And my husband, Mark, still has highly gaze-able eyes. They're blue with gray flecks, or gray with blue, depending on his mood and the color of his T-shirt. When he's angry, his eyes turn cold; it's like the sun's been lost in cloud cover. But when he's content, his eyes are warm and alive, and I, to quote a hundred corny love poems, get happily lost in them.

Still, when two people are face to face for an extended period of time, they start to notice things. My husband, for example, has observed over the years that I'm never on time for anything, that I don't fold towels correctly, that I leave a trail of half-consumed Diet Pepsis in my wake, and that I'm incapable of backing the car into the garage in an appropriate fashion. (Three side-view mirrors have been sacrificed to date.) I, on the other hand, have come to realize that Mark never remembers to turn on his cell phone, that he keeps our bedroom at Icelandic temperatures, that he reloads dishes I've already placed in the dishwasher (according to his exacting specifications) when he thinks I'm not looking, and that he's unnaturally legalistic about backing the car into the garage. (Driving in nose-first works just fine, thank you, and not a single mirror need be lost.)

Every marriage has its quirks, of course. Two humans can only cohabitate for so long before weak spots and rough edges start to show. But add in a couple kids, stir in life's stresses and pressures, mix with some trauma and tragedy, glaze with the basic selfishness of human nature, and voilà—you've got a recipe for trouble.

A Radical Shift

A few years ago, Mark and I cooked up some trouble that no amount of eye gazing could fix. Neither of us intentionally sabotaged our marriage, but over-extended schedules, miscommunication, and conflicting goals gradually boiled over into estrangement and confusion. I cannot remember a more miserable time.

One of our problems was that I was traveling too much, performing concerts around North America.

Mark felt abandoned: Can't she see she's sacrificing the needs of our family for her ministry and career?

I felt unsupported: Doesn't he understand I'm doing everything humanly possible, burning the candle at both ends, in order to still be there for the family and live up to my spiritual calling and professional obligations?

The only thing we could agree on was that we weren't meeting each other's needs.

I found myself on a flight to Chicago for yet another concert, hunched in my seat, staring out the window, trying to hide my tears from my seatmates. Three hours earlier I'd raced out of the house (late as usual); Mark and I had exchanged a cold good-bye. I felt defensive and hopeless and very lonely. I knew something had to change. Mark, preferably.

I'd been carrying a book around in my travel bag for months—As For Me and My House by Walter Wangerin. A friend had recommended it to me as her favorite tome on marriage, and I kept meaning to read it. I wrestled it from beneath the seat in front of me and cracked open the cover, skeptical about the possibility of finding any real help in the pages. But by the time the plane landed, my understanding of marriage had begun to radically shift.

The idea I'll always remember from Wangerin's book was his suggestion that there are three entities in a marriage: the husband, the wife, and a new, holy creation—the marriage itself. Wangerin pointed out that as long as the focus is on whether each individual's needs are being met, the marriage will be filled with defensiveness and accusation. But if the focus is on what a couple can do to best serve the marriage, to deepen and widen it and help it flourish, then both partners can work unselfishly to that end.

Crammed into the second-to-last row of a 737, I began to see that our marriage wasn't just about Mark and Carolyn. God had invited us to work with him in creating something new and precious; our relationship was a being that needed care. We wouldn't think of ignoring the children God had entrusted to us. Why had it been okay to neglect the relationship he'd given us? I'd been focused on the kids, on ministry, on work, and I expected my marriage to support and sustain me through a busy time. I'd forgotten that a marriage, like all living things, needs nourishment to grow.

I came home to a distant husband and a chaotic house, and I wondered how I was going to put my paradigm shift into any useful practice. But I haltingly shared it with Mark, and I saw a flicker of something in his gray-blue eyes. I think it was hope.

Pulse-quickening Questions

It took a long time to rebuild what we'd let fall into disrepair. We had to stand, side by side, and look at our marriage as if it were a fixer-upper we were going to remodel. I began to put better boundaries between work and family; Mark worked to move from a position of guardedness back into trust. Slowly we became a team again, aiming for the same goals. And one day, 18 months after my Chicago flight, Mark murmured as we drifted off to sleep, "Hey. Things are good." And, reloaded dishwashers notwithstanding, they were.

But that's not the end of the story. In the intervening years, it's dawned on us that God calls us to look beyond ourselves not only to learn how we can serve our marriage, but also to discover how our marriage can serve the world. We're blessed in order to be a blessing; that's the way God's been running things since the days of Abraham and Sarah. Every good gift we're given—time, talents, resources—is meant to be passed on in some way. The gift of a good marriage is no exception.

So Mark and I have begun to ask some pulse-quickening questions: How is our marriage adding to the kingdom of God? Who is our marriage blessing? What are we part of that's bigger than ourselves?

This new vision of what our marriage is even for works itself out in a variety of ways. During football season, it means that I take a larger share of the domestic load so Mark can enhance his work as a high school counselor by being a volunteer coach. During my own touring season, our roles are reversed. But the best times are when we get to serve, in big and small ways, together.

Holy Together

A couple of spring breaks ago, Mark took a group of 11th grade students to Juarez, Mexico, to build a playground for children living in an incredibly impoverished area called The Kilometers. I came along, and we brought our young son and daughter as well. Conditions weren't the stuff of romantic get-aways—we slept on the floor of a rustic church basement, listening to the scurry of cockroaches and the whistle of desert winds through the holes in the walls. Fine dining was not in the cards; almost every person on the trip became violently ill throughout the 10 days we were there.

Still, there was an unmistakable sense of being a part of something holy. The high school students weren't church kids, but they met Mexican Christians who were deeply in love with Jesus, and they were intrigued. All of us wept for the indignities we saw, but we were thrilled to feel, in some small way, we were making a difference.

One night we worked on our job site long into the evening, spreading out newly poured concrete with rakes and shovels and dirty bare feet. Our backs ached, our eyes and skin stung from the constant assault of sand and wind. But a Mexican sunset is beautiful even in The Kilometers, and as pinks and oranges streaked the sky, I looked around for my husband. He was in a huddle of teenagers, all of them giddy with the power of doing something good. Our four-year-old was tugging on his sleeve, eager for him to meet her new Mexican friend. He was busy. But I managed to catch his blue-gray eyes, and for a long, romantic moment, he held my gaze. Then we looked out together, friends and lovers, at the work left to be done.

Carolyn Arends, singer and songwriter, is a columnist for our sister publication Christianity Today. She's also author of Wrestling with Angels: Adventures with Faith and Doubt (Harvest House). www.carolynarends.com

Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian Woman magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Today's Christian Woman

Why I Love My Husband, Part Two

Carolyn Arends — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:22:17 -0700

In a previous post, I revealed the first of two events (that took place on the same weekend) that help illuminate why I find my husband Mark so darn lovable. I promised to follow up with a depiction of the second incident, but then got distracted by other things. (My districtability is, I hope, one of the things my husband finds lovable about me. Or at least tolerable.)

Anyway, I'm sure you've been holding your breath waiting for Reason Number Two, so here, at long last, it is:

Sunday afternoon, after church, Mark decided we should go for a family bike ride. Now, Mark has been an avid mountain biker for about 15 years. Traditionally, he meets up with several other men of exceptional skill and questionable wisdom, and they measure the success of their ride in mud and blood. I have resolutely avoided riding with him because (a) I enjoy my skin and bones in their present, intact condition and (b) I don't have a hope of keeping up with him, nor do I particularly want to. However, he promised this would be a leisurely family ride, no first aid kit required.

The poor man has not been able to ride much of late, having selflessly sacrificed his mountain time on the altar of family and work commitments. So, despite his promise that all would be mellow, he arrived at the car in full riding gear. We're talking padded shorts, special gloves, and the shoes that clip into his pedals. I've really got to get him a playdate with the aforementioned fellow riders soon.

Anyway, we went to a park that has nice, level riding paths, because our daughter Bethany had only had her training wheels off for a week and was understandably reticient about riding in traffic and/or tackling any slopes. For about 45 minutes, we circled the paths, occasionally branching off to ride around the bases of an empty ball diamond. Eventually, our son Ben and I grew weary of the riding and left to play a round of tennis at an adjacent court. Mark stayed on the paths and fields with Bethany for a little more bike time.

15 minutes later, Beth came rushing into the tennis court, breathlessly hollering, DADDY'S HURT!

Huh?

Sure enough, Mark came limping over the crest of a grassy knoll, the skin removed from all available elbow and knee surfaces.

"What happened?" I asked, racking my brain for a scenario that would explain how my riding warrior husband had hurt himself on a path appropriate for our tentative seven-year-old.

"Beth asked me to do a pop-a-wheelie," Mark winced. "I did one, and it went fine. But when I did a bigger one, I realized I hadn't greased my pedals in a while, and my shoes wouldn't release from the clips, and so I couldn't put my feet down, and the bike flipped over me."

"Oh," I said. "And the reason you needed to do a bigger pop-a-wheelie ... ?"

"Well, after I did the first one, Bethany said Kevin did bigger ones, so, you know, I had to do a bigger one too."

Kevin is our next-door-neighbor. Like Bethany, he is in the second grade. I'll have to see if he's available for a playdate soon.

Pop Songs and Theodicy - Should They Ever Mix? (Wanted: Lyric Input)

Carolyn Arends — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:53:20 -0700

Several months ago I took a chance and posted a new lyric called "I Am a Soul" here on Conversantlife. It was scary to go "public" with a baby song, especially when it involved sharing naked words without their accompanying music. Still, folks were kind and the process was useful enough that, well, here I go again.

This is another new song on deck for the project I am currently recording. It is my attempt to articulate some of my struggle with the way we (I) understand God's sovereignty as it relates to the events (monumental and trivial) of our lives. Not everyone is going to agree with my current understanding of things -- I can live with that. But I'm curious to know what the song says to people.

One of the things I've been learning from the feedback on my Christianity Today columns is that we all hear things in the context of the conversations that are already going on in our own communities and especially in our own heads. So, if you would be so kind, please help me out here. What does this song say to you? Can you follow it? Does it speak to you? If so, in what way? Does it push any buttons? If so, which ones? Does it make you feel anything?

With thanks for your friendship and input,

According to Plan

Carolyn Arends

Rain comes and so often it falls
On the good and the evil, it’s not personal
The sun shines, ‘cause that’s what suns do
It probably don’t mean it’s been thinking ‘bout you
Even though God’s in control of it all
Sometimes the sparrow is going to fall

Well I’m not so sure that God moves everything
Like pawns in a chess game or puppets on string
And I can’t determine just whether or not
He causes our trials or He makes them stop
But I am convinced we get one guarantee:
There’s no situation that He can’t redeem
When He moves in our hearts that’s when we understand
It’s going according to plan

We try to pull back the veil
We tug at the curtain but to no avail
We say “There are no accidents”
But we can’t account for all life’s randomness
So maybe some things are not orchestrated
Oh but with God nothing has to be wasted

Well I’m not so sure that God moves everything
Like pawns in a chess game or puppets on string
And I can’t determine just whether or not
He causes our trials or He makes them stop
But I am convinced we get one guarantee:
There’s no situation that He can’t redeem
When He moves in our hearts that’s when we understand
It’s going according to plan

Yes I am convinced we get one guarantee
There’s no situation that He can’t redeem
When what we meant for harm he turns into some good
When our hearts start changing then it’s understood
He’s doing the miracles only He can
It’s going according to plan

c 2008, Running Arends Music/ASCAP

Silent Bells and Other Tragedies

Carolyn Arends — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:07:40 -0700

I mentioned in a recent post my ongoing delight with A. J. Jacobs' book THE KNOW IT ALL, which documents the author's quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica from A-Z. An entry from way back in the "Bs" has kind of been haunting me:

The world's largest bell was built in 1733 in Moscow, and weighed in at more than four hundred thousand pounds. It never rang--it was broken by fire before it could be struck. What a sad little story. All that work, all that plannning, all those expectations--then nothing. Not it just sits there in Russia, a big metallic symbol of failure. I have a moment of silence for the silent bell.

Now, I've always been a sucker for a good bell metaphor, as evidenced by the lyric to the bridge of my song "Free" (from Pollyanna's Attic):

We're so full of freedom that we just may well

Split down the middle like the liberty bell

There's just too many lies, we're too free to tell

We're all free to die, we're free to go to hell ...

I know, I know, I was possibly not in my most upbeat mood ever when I wrote that one. But even on my best days, I think there's something achingly tragic about bells that can't ring. That's probably because bells that don't ring remind of singers who don't sing and thinkers who don't think and disciples who don't pray and children who don't laugh and lovers who don't love and dreamers who don't dream and, well, you get the idea. (Notice I am not mentioning bloggers who don't blog.)

I'm pretty sure you and me are both, in our own uniques ways, bells that were meant to ring. So make some noise today. The kind only you can make.

Theology in Aisle 7

Carolyn Arends — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:18:38 -0700

My newest CT column has just been posted on Christianity Today's site.

Theology in Aisle 7
Trying to organize a God who transcends.

I love office supply stores. Reams of fresh paper (Aisle 16) and boxes of unsharpened pencils (Aisle 5) still give me back-to-school butterflies, the sense that the future is yet to be written and anything is possible. But I'm most drawn to the bins, sorters, and all manner of organizational aids in Aisle 7. They glisten with shiny plastic promise, reminding me I am just one astute purchase away from transforming the paper-riddled chaos of my life into structured bliss.

Recently I found just the thing, a two-foot black box with an open front divided into eight sections. I used my label maker (Aisle 3) to give each compartment its purpose, happily imagining soccer notices and utility bills lying obediently in their designated places. My husband came home and grinned at the box, envisioning it as next month's addition to the rejected-organizational-aid pile. "That," he told me gently, "is a junk collector."

But it will be organized junk.

I labeled one of the compartments "seminary"; this time the back-to-school butterflies were not merely nostalgic. I've begun chipping away at a master's degree, and on the same day I bought my new organizer I decided on a concentration in Spiritual Theology. I've been longing for more structure, not only in my office but also in my faith.

I've been searching for frameworks, outlines, contexts; ways to more thoroughly understand what I believe. The studies I've chosen emphasize systematic theology. The very word systematic gives me that Aisle 7 rush. I can hardly wait to be organized!

But there are people—wise, godly people—who grin at me like my husband did at my organizer. "Do you think," asked my friend Barbara, who happens to be a theology professor, "that part of you is looking for control?" I stared at her blankly. No, part of me isn't looking for control. All of me is looking for control. I hate chaos and uncertainty. I am deeply bothered by doctrinal divisions within even the small confines of my own church tradition. And honestly, I really don't like it when God behaves unpredictably, when he seems to be as much about mystery as he is about revelation, and when he refuses to fit into the slots I have labeled for him.

Faith would be much tidier if God could be contained within mutually agreed upon doctrinal positions. Scripture would be much more manageable if it were pure exposition, if there weren't all those sprawling narratives, wistful poems, and cryptic apocalyptic visions. Why didn't God give us his Word in sermon points that spell out catchy acronyms? Why is it all so messy?

Even our most precise expositor, the apostle Paul, holds revelation and mystery in tension. In his letter to the Ephesians, he proclaims, "God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure" (1:9, NLT). But for all the time Paul spends explaining things, he still has the nerve to celebrate everything he can't understand about God. "Oh, how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! For who can know the Lord's thoughts? … All glory to him forever!" (Rom. 11:33-34, 36).

This, I'm beginning to understand, is my challenge: to immerse myself in all that has been revealed about God while celebrating all that is mystery. We have a God who both transcends our messy lives and incarnates himself in them. That reality is hard to organize, but it's the best news there is.

There's a story, often credited to E. Stanley Jones, about a missionary who gets lost in the jungle. He comes upon a village in the middle of the trees, and asks a resident to lead him out. The local agrees, and for an hour he walks ahead of the missionary, clearing a way through the foliage with a machete.

Eventually the missionary asks, "Are you sure we are going the right way? Isn't there a path somewhere?" The villager smiles. "Friend, I am the path."

"I am the way, the truth, and the life," Jesus tells us (John 14:6); "I AM," declares Yahweh (Ex. 3:14). My ideas about God are not the path. My church tradition, helpful as it is in pointing to him, is not the path. I plan to spend the rest of my life learning the best terminology we have for our understanding of what God has done and is doing, but the terms are not the path. Only God is. Only he can lead me through the jungle that is my life and into the boundless adventure of life with him.

Praise God, there is not a thing in Aisle 7—or in the universe—that can contain him.

*******************

As always, I'd love to hear your feedback ...

Blessings,
Carolyn

Oh, Mann

Carolyn Arends — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:17:54 -0700

I'm reading A. J. Jacob's THE KNOW IT ALL, which is the author's very funny and remarkably informative account of his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica. I've just reached page 194; Jacobs has arrived at "M", and discovered this quote from educational reformer Horace Mann's final speech to his students:

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Gee, Horace. You're setting the bar rather high, don't you think? Can we evaluate winning "some victory for humanity" on a sliding scale?

Still, if I had a Bucket List, I think I'd put Mann's suggestion on it, especially in light of Ephesians 2:10 (from a Source that really does "know it all".) I know I don't have to make big things happen (that's up to the Author and Finisher of this story), but I shouldn't be surprised if they do.

Making Hay

Carolyn Arends — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:15:23 -0700

There are several bloggers I enjoy (many of them right here on conversantlife) but there is only one who consistently makes me cry. John blogs over at The Dirty Shame, and he's a writer, the way some people are sangers ... he can really do something with words.

John recently announced that he will be doing less with words on his blog (not quitting, but reducing the number of entries per week) so that he can put more energy into writing a novel. To explain his motivation for, well, getting on with it, author-wise, John shared the following quote:

"An idea that fixed him to one spot was that life was a death dance and that he had quickly passed through the spring and summer of his life and was halfway through the fall. He had to do a better job on the fall because everyone on earth knew what the winter was like."
- Jim Harrison, Farmer

Now, to all you springy teens and summery twenty-somethings out there, those words might not mean a lot. But to anyone who can see "40" on the horizon (or in the rear-view mirror), you'll understand why that quote did indeed "fix me to one spot" for a minute. Spring and summer went by so fast, and I don't know how long the fall (and, eventually, the winter) will last. I need to hurry up and make some hay.

But maybe "hurry up" is the wrong impulse. Undoubtedly, I need to speed up in some areas (get the office cleaned out already!) But I need to slow way down in others (let's read another story tonight, honey, even though it's past your bedtime.) I don't know much about farming (to return to the hay metaphor), but it seems to me farmers have a distinct advantage in that the rhythm of their work is so defined: sow, nurture, reap, repeat. For a city girl like me, with too many irons in too many fires (or too many crops in too many fields), the rhythm is harder to define. Which thing to sow today? What needs nurturing? What's ready for harvest? And, perhaps most urgently, which load of laundry most desperately needs washing (whites or delicates)?

Sow, nurture, reap, repeat. How do I do that in my marriage, my parenting, my singing and writing and studying and friending. (I know that "friending" is not a word, but life's too short too quibble, haven't you been paying attention?)

Sow, nurture, reap, repeat. How? I better add "pray". Show me what to cultivate today, God. Send the right amount of sun and rain. Number my days. You're the Lord of the Harvest after all. Please help me make some hay.