Ravens

Peter, “It’s just a bit of silliness really.”
JM Barrie, “I should hope so.”

~from the movie, Finding Neverland

There’s something about theology and ministry that makes me serious. Now, that’s not a comment about how seriously I take it, or these are topics of great concern that merit only very serious attitudes.

It’s more that these topics, for whatever reason, seem to cause a shift in my personality. I become very serious. Don’t believe me? Read this blog. It’s very serious, mind-crushingly serious, alienatingly serious. I can’t even remember the last whimsical post I wrote here. I can’t remember, for that matter, the last whimsical anything I wrote. I try to post on what I’m thinking about, but since this is an entirely sporadic blog (liberally sprinkled with “sorry I haven’t written for awhile” sort of posts), I’m not really even sure what the goal of this blog is and it’s certainly not a cross section of what I usually am thinking about.

This has become my serious side. It’s the side of me that doesn’t let itself out in most social situations, and the side of me that, for whatever reason, is both an integral part of who I am and the choices I have made, yet I don’t express in other situations.

Remember the pensieve from Harry Potter? It allowed one to store memories, pulling them out like threads then storing them in a bowl.

This blog, and writing in general of late, has been my pensieve for seriousness. Scroll down, read the earlier posts. Very serious stuff. The writing at least. The pictures are more about beauty.

Truth and beauty, that’s the stuff of life, yeah?

Only for the longest time whenever I’ve had to describe myself or add a tagline I’ve used the phrase “a lover of truth, beauty and occasionally silliness”.

That really does sum up my personality. Only there has been a plain lack of occassionally silliness in my writing. And honestly, I miss it. I’ve been thinking for a while about how to get it back in but, of course, as my main writing task these days is my dissertation and dissertations are, as a rule, especially soul-crushingly serious even within the already serious genre of academic writing, I’ve not a lot of mental space for indulging my whimsy.

I say I don’t have a lot of mental space for whimsy, but isn’t it a matter of making space?

Did I post that part of my dissertation, the part I talked about making space is a significant part of our relationship with God and with others, not only something we do but something that reflects the image of God? I don’t feel like looking now, because that’s tedious, and as there’s few things more serious than tedium, I’m going to dodge looking for the requisite link.

Making space is good. But making space for whimsy and silliness? That’s something the desert monastics would certainly scold me about. Such a serious lot. And the trouble is that I have long taken them very seriously so while I disagree with their scowling about laughter and fun, I realize that there’s was often a depth of spirituality that I, in my best moments, really would love to discover. Maybe my blog has become an unintended reflection of my inner suspicions that theology and the Christian life really are, and should be, quite serious endeavors.

“A hermit saw someone laughing, and said to him, “We have to render an account of our whole life before heaven and earth, and you can laugh?”

That’s from the Desert Fathers. Not all those desert monastic really knew God, but the ones quoted in that book did, and much more than I do.

And yet… to a person, every mature Christian I’ve met or heard speak in person–those whose walks with God are deeper and longer and more thorough than my own–have a sense of humor. That’s always high on a list of relationship ideals, right, that the other person has a sense of humor? That was a big part of my attraction to Amy. She made me laugh.

“And you can laugh?” Yeah, I think so. Precisely because we have to render an account. And there are parts of my rendering that will be, to be sure, pretty ludicrous in the re-telling.

Theology and the Christian life are serious, to be sure, so merit a degree of somber interaction. However, when it comes down to it, both are also pretty ludicrous. We’re trying to come up with words that describe the creator and sustainer and ultimate identity of the universe, who we say is one but also three, God but also man, but not just a man, a man that isn’t like other men but is so much like other men that our very orthodoxy is dependent on testifying that this man is a man as much as other men but not like other men in all sorts of pretty specific ways, like the fact that he didn’t sin and like the fact that even though God incarnated as a man, this man didn’t exhaust all the identity of God even though he was fully God in every way, but since we also have the Father–who was with but not identical with this man, but be careful about using qualifying identical because then you have three gods instead of one; and this third one, or part or mode or person (but not separate person, more of an identity within the threeness of the oneness) is tricky because it’s not really a person, only it is, but more of a wind, or a breath, or a tempest, or a bird? or maybe a force but also a person because our trinity needs three persons and isn’t the beginning of a joke in which a son, a father, and ghost walk into a bar. So, the man died, really died, but didn’t die because he was raised from the dead and is now alive but not alive with us, with the Father, and with us in Spirit–which isn’t a pretty phrase meaning we’re thinking about him but he’s literally with us in Spirit–only to return again at some point which is always just about to happen for the last 1988 years or so.

I could go on and on. But you get the point. There’s an inherent ludicrous quality about theology that sort of inspires a bit of snickering when anyone tries to take it too seriously.

Yet people are very intent about taking it too seriously and if you don’t take it seriously they’ll be the first to remind you how serious to take it. But what do they know?

Really, all that seriousness is about trying to cope with the fact that much of theology, and much of our lives, and much of reality in general is ludicrous. Not because it’s meaningless. But because the meaning is so complex and intricate that our attempts to package it up in brown paper with neat little bows is ludicrous.

And because, I think, God has a sense of humor too, so whimsy is embedded in Creation. Our recognition of it is not dodging the main points of life, it’s indulging in them, recognizing and interacting with the world in a way that doesn’t take it as serious as many people want us to take it.

Finding the silliness, exploring the whimsy, letting go the absoluteness that seriousness seeks to impose, isn’t just a distraction. It is, I increasingly believe, part of our participation with God, part of recognizing the world for what it is–a ludicrous sort of place–seeing the contradictions and complexities as often displaying the ludicrous reality in which we now live.

Laughter is good medicine not because it’s a placebo, but because it helps us see the world rightly once more. Whimsy gives us perspective. And inasmuch as it does, it is, I think, holy.

“And you can laugh?” Yeah, I think so. Because we don’t just render an account our sins. We celebrate our salvation, and that is a feast, a joyous event, a reflection of the fact that this God, the God, our God, takes us seriously but not that seriously. He thinks us ludicrous too, and is willing to rectify our faults because of his love for us, not because we deserve it, because we’ve proven how serious we are about our salvation, but because he wants to. So he does. Ludicrous as it is, God saves us. It’s his whimsy to save the world. God is holy and God saves, becoming one of us so that we can participate with him. Foolish and scandalous as this might be, that’s what he does. And it makes me laugh, because it’s so thoroughly good.

Truth, beauty and occasionally silliness aren’t just a tagline, after all. They’re how I define holiness because they are how I see God’s identity expressed in this world.

They are, as such, also the expressions of love.

Which is, I think, what theology should also be about. Certainly it’s what I want to be about, and I think finding the whimsy and humor again in my writing is a necessary part of my becoming a more developed theologian.

A theologian who is always serious doesn’t really know God.

I could go on and on, writing serious words about whimsy and bogging down in existential introspection about my own identity as a theologian and the seriousness of silliness as part of the theological project. But, that would be ludicrous, so instead, let us end with this, a yodeling pickle.

This post is part of the May Synchroblog. Here’s a list of other participants in this month’s bit of silliness:

• Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – Lighten Up!
• Maria Kettleson Anderson at My Real Journey - The Art of Passionately Lightening Up
• Melody Harrison at Logic and Imagination – {I Don’t Do Joy}
• Wendy McCaig – Lighten Up: Learning to Let Go From A Man Who Lost It All
• Carol Kuniholm at Words Half Heart – Resurrection Laughter
• R. Lee Bayes at Southern Humanist – Loving Light
• Alan Knox – Be Sarcastic With One Another
• Tammy Carter at Blessing the Beloved – A Tricky Little Journey
• Christine Sine at Godspace – Lighten Up: It Really is the Best Medicine
• Glenn Hager – Margaritas, Metallica, and A Serious Case of the Giggles.
• Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – A Spoonful of Sugar
• K.W. Leslie at More Christ – When Jesus Made A Funny
• Maurice Broaddus – Why So Serious?
• Ellen Haroutunian – A Laughing God

Well, we had an eventful Easter weekend. On Good Friday, we got a call from the doctors office telling us that some of Amy’s tests had come back elevated, so we had to go to the hospital for more tests. The doctor on call (our doctor was on vacation) strongly suggested inducing, as Amy was at about 38 weeks and the tests suggests a few possible concerns, some quite major. Both mom and baby were still healthy, so it seemed better to keep it this way by delivering.

That started Friday evening, progressed all throughout Saturday. I got a little rest overnight, Amy hardly any. Amy had an epidural about 8 on Saturday night, we thought we would have a better sleep as it moved along, delivering well into Easter.

Well, we were both woken up at 11:45 by nurses who had noticed the heart beat was lower, a possible sign the baby was on her way. And so she was. Shocking to Amy and to the nurses, and to me who woke up hearing “Call the doctor, the baby is coming very soon.” I woke up pretty quick.

Amy started pushing around 12:30. At 12:43 am on April 8, 2012 – Easter Sunday – we welcomed a very alert and very interactive Vianne Rose Oden into the world.

Both baby and Amy are doing quite well. We finally came home yesterday afternoon. Thanks so much to the wonderful nurses at Arcadia Methodist who helped ease a time of pain and anxiety before the delivery, and then who helped us find our way as we became parents for the first time. Thanks to Dr. Walker who took care of us right at first, worked behind the scenes during the inducement, and who was very kind and skilled at the delivery.

And most of all thanks be to God for a wonderful, beautiful, healthy baby girl.

Some details for those who are interested: She was born 5 pounds 13 ounces, 17 3/4 inches long, and blonde hair (showing her Oden genes, as with both Amy and me only my dad’s side of the family has blonde hair).

Now some pictures:

Oh, and the name comes from the movie Chocolat, we heard it and both liked it right away. It’s pronounced Vi- as in the letter, and Anne as in Anne.

We have been going pretty non-stop since we moved. Just about every day something was going on; more for Amy than for me, but often for me. As much as I have been trying to settle in, the last two weeks really were more frenzied than peace-filled. Amy hasn’t even had a chance to find peace here with all that has been going on.

We slowed down yesterday, finishing up putting boxes away and finally feeling like we were here. Yesterday was our yellow light. Today was our red. Today, we stopped. Had blueberry pancakes. Watched a movie. Then we sat outside. The first time Amy has sat out there for any length of time longer than five minutes. I’ve worked out there before today, but only for a couple hour stretches. Today, we had lunch out there and stayed until it got cold and dusk. Enjoyed the breeze. Enjoyed the sun. Enjoyed the birds and the squirrels. I even enjoyed the worms that were surprised when I turned over a loose piece of sod.

We stopped. We rested. We recovered a little bit of our focus and much of our soul.

This is a little bit of what I noticed today:

The New Year is upon us.

I’m not a very sentimental person, as you may have noticed, so while I would have loved to write a post looking back on the wonderful year that was 2011, it just doesn’t rise out of me. Despite my being a burgeoning historian, I don’t tend to dwell on my own personal history, spending most of my mental life anywhere from one week to ten years ahead of where I actually am. Maybe I have a wee retrospective in my at some point soon, especially as I’m gearing up for getting into a whole lot of writing again.

Here are a few small things that I am looking forward to in 2012:

1) Moving at least twice.
2) Writing, finishing and, ideally, turning in my dissertation.
3) Having our first baby.

These three are not exactly mutually exclusive, but they’re not really mutually conducive.

But I have hope. And more than hope, faith, and more than faith, love — for all three of these events and for the one I am sharing my life with throughout these events, and for the family on both sides that support, pray, and come alongside us. And for the building friendships that resonate from my past, from school, from church.

I look forward to 2012 with a lot of building excitement for the known, and unknown, possibilities. May God be with us in each moment and each movement!

Something I wrote just about six years ago:

“Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.”

So says a desert father. Well, more than one. It’s a theme which runs through the deep spiritual writings of the centuries.

Don’t go anywhere. Stay where you are at. Do not distract yourself. Do not engage in things which offer a false sustenance. Engage the soul by shutting off the soul’s propensity for diversion. Do not seek answers elsewhere, for they are within.

The answers are within, coming from the Spirit who is within. This is not self-empowerment, this is self-weakening, self-loosening, self-forgetting.

Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.

Everything?

Only if you stay in your cell. These monks were not talking about a weekend or a week. They spoke in terms of years and decades. The human soul does not, they knew, need continually more input. It needs to realize itself, the beautiful and the gruesome within, and by recognizing itself it can only then begin to recognize that which is outside of itself.

This lesson hits me again this week, though I think it is something that has been lingering in the back of my consciousness for a fair while. It’s a different lesson of sorts than back in 2005 because I’m in an entirely different kind of cell. Back then, I was living in the mountains, where there was beauty all around. It wasn’t idyllic to be sure as there was also a neighbor who spent just about my entire time up there doing do it yourself home remodeling, taking his apparent frustrations at life out against his vacation home. There was also the fact I was living with my parents at the time. Which while a saving situation for me, no doubt, was also immensely humbling and never quite amenable to the sorts of pure solitude those monks experiences.

Now, I’m married. Now I’m also living in a place neither one of us like. It is concrete everywhere, noise constantly, no view of mountains or vistas, one tree in sight and it right in front of the window of far too nearby neighbors. We’re surrounded on every side by the busyness of seminary people, a particular franticness of zeal, youth, new independence, continued quest for a more secure reality, making it not entirely like living in a dorm, but near enough to the same experience that I’m constantly buffeted by the extroversion of others.

I hated living in a dorm. I still do. I love my present roommate, but would like to have more space around us.

Ever since I was young I feel the presence of others. There’s both a sense quality to this, as when I’m engaged in work I become hyper sensitive to distractions that pop me out of my thinking zone. And I’m enough of a Pentecostal still to know that I’m also very spiritually sensitive. For a Thinker (INTJ) like myself, this sounds weird when I say it to others, but it’s not a matter of feeling. Whenever I take any of those spiritual gift sorters I score high on discernment, I really do feel sensitive to the spiritual realities around me, and when I’m constantly around people I’m constantly on edge with what’s going on.

I think it’s probably best to describe it a bit like a TV antenna. I pick up on all the signals, though I am not always able to tune into something clearly. And when there are a lot of signals, I feel a lot of static in my life.

Which is a gift to offer the church, but it’s also something, I know, that needs a break. That’s why I so value getting space from people, so that I’m away from the signals for just a little while, and in doing that its helps be find focus so that I can contribute to people when I’m more actively engaged.

But here? Here in Pasadena I don’t have that option. I never wanted to move back here. There’s frenzy and chaos all around, even as I know the people around me here really are good people who, for the most part, are genuinely seeking God. It’s not them, I know, it’s me.

Though, I do have to say it’s also sometimes them. Noise is a way of exclaiming meaning to the world, and those not long out of college tend to want to really find their meaning. So, there’s not really a value of silence.

Oh, to have a monastic complex here at Fuller, where silence was taken seriously as a spiritual boon.

But that’s not what Fuller cares about. We are told to put up with the noise of others, to feel bad when we feel frustrated, to let their barbaric yawps be sounded without complaint.

This is the cell I live in now. This is, I know, where God has me.

So, I can let it get to me, right and orderly frustration at being constantly bombarded by the antics of others. Or I can somehow draw close to that which I wrote in 2005. If I stay here, I can learn everything.

That goes against all the frustration I feel this week. How can I learn when there is constantly someone or something intruding themselves into my space?

Clearly I’ve not learned everything. And I’m here until probably at the very least next June; with both of us working on campus this year it is replacing one set of frustrations with others for us to find another place.

The frenzy is in my own soul now too. I’ve nurtured it and encouraged it, letting my yearning for my ideal learning place undermine the learning in this place. Certainly there are real reasons it has happened, but there are also reasons that are inside me that I’ve given excuses for.

It’s a species of acedia, I now realize, that oft forgotten sin that I’m particularly susceptible to.

The ancient monastics talk alot about that too. I have some texts right over there, on the bookshelf behind my desk.

Maybe I need to get back to reading those, to see again what this cell has to teach me. What God has to teach me by having me here in this place I do not like. Maybe it is a teaching that helps me become someone that God likes more, becoming more in tune with him so that I can live more in tune with this world.

That sounds like everything to me.

This past Saturday, Amy and I had our first shared creative event. We celebrated my book release and her CD release at Two Rivers Church in Oak Grove, Oregon. I’m hoping to post some more pictures and such from the event. For now here is a recording of the entire event, for your listening pleasure:

Sometimes I realize that people who only read what I write around here probably have a very different impression of me than what I would give off in person.

I’m far too serious when I write!

I need to lighten things up on occasion…

It’s just not right to call this blog ravens if there’s never any play time going on.

It has been a long while since I’ve seen the movie, but ever since I wrote those posts on the wilderness in May, I’ve been thinking about that scene in Last of the Mohicans when Hawkeye is trying to save his companions who have been captured. He enters the village and has to pass a gauntlet of warriors in order to make it to where Cora and Heyward are being held, their lives hanging in the balance during a hasty negotiation between one wronged native and the village leader. Those details aren’t particularly what I was thinking of, so forget those details if you’d like.

What I was thinking of was Hawkeye’s journey from the outside into the middle, to his goal. It came to mind because after those posts I got to thinking how it might sound like I was extolling my own virtues or suggesting some obvious and easy path to spiritual maturity. Like I was saying, “Just walk to God, and you’ll be set.” There’s a lot of that kind of sentiment, after all, in the church and in religious settings of any kind. Just put it before the cross. Just let go of that habit or hangup. Just read your Bible. Just be a good person. Just do this, just do that. Just be mature and always in tune with God’s will for your life.

That’s all. Easy stuff.

Only it’s not. Not for me. Maybe others have had moments in which they wake up one morning, or hear a good sermon, and go about the rest of their life in joyous bliss, no longer making any mistakes or running into walls.

That’s not my experience at all. And I don’t want to leave thoughts on turning to God or making one’s way through the wilderness sounding like it’s yet another “just…”

Because there’s no simple way. There’s hard decisions. There’s moments of doubt. There’s a lot of falling down and going in circles and even falling back. Maybe I lack the discipline other spiritual giants might have. But I think I’m in the majority, so maybe my experiences are worth sharing.

When I was in college, a sophomore, I started reading a lot of John Wesley. John Wesley is famous for his bit on sanctification, that grand word that is used in a lot of ways but mostly means you becoming more like the person God intended you to be. The sanctified person, or the person on the road of sanctification, becomes more in tune with God, in both thought and action.

Ah, I said, that’s the life for me. I did a lot of what Wesley did: fasting — praying — studying. Only that spark to do wasn’t followed by any joy or peace or progress. My life verse became “to live is Christ, to die is gain.” Not because I understood it, because I did not. I understood parts, that to die is gain because that means eternity with God, and I could kind of explain the first phrase, or at least try to explain it in the ways that a commentary might help me. But I couldn’t say that first part, not truly from my depths. So, being young and ignorant, I prayed, “Teach me God to understand what ‘to live is Christ’ means.” I followed this with, “Teach me God to be able to say this truly from my own heart.”

He did and he is, because while I understand more than I did then, I still struggle with what it means to truly say from my deepest self. I’m closer, but I’m not there.

And thinking of the process over the years, the process of me learning in the process of God’s Spirit teaching, I think about that gauntlet scene in Last of the Mohicans. The path to this center has been, for me, one of getting gouged, hit, stabbed, sliced, tripped. I’ve stumbled, I’ve fallen, I’ve winced, I’ve come very close to losing heart entirely. It wasn’t any kind of virtue or purity that allows me to write those posts below. It’s more of a doggedness to press on despite myself. When I fall, I get back up. When I forget, I find someone to help me remember. When I am beaten, I don’t give up. I have gone through seasons where the pain of life seems so severe that I am numbed. And to that “to live is Christ” verse, I’ve long learned to add, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

No matter what, I’ve learned, don’t let guilt, or mistakes, or other people, or their guilt or their mistakes, or their ignorance, or their judgmentalism, or their false spirituality, or immaturity get in the way. Don’t let sin or frustration or doubt or abounding troubles get in the way. Forget what is behind, and strain towards what is ahead. This might even have to be the call several times a day.

The spiritual life, for me, has been a long slog through dangerous terrain. I’ve been beaten up, but I’ve also become better. That’s probably why I’m still reading Wesley. Because he didn’t say all was easy, he said there’s someone more to be, that person that God intends us to be. I think this comes out of the testimony of Scripture and I see it as the constant challenge, no matter what excuses or frustrations might impede my progress today or tomorrow. Because, I testify that straining toward is something the Spirit honors, and the Spirit reaches out, so that even as the lessons seem to continue on and on and on, I can look back and see where I’ve come from and realize I’m at heights I couldn’t imagine before (even as I look ahead and see heights before me that seem impossible to attain).

Back in the beginning of 2003, I had finished my M.Div, was still working at a church, though a church that didn’t want me (you don’t have a future here, an elder said). I had a good ministry, I thought, and I was doing some creative explorations that came out of a burgeoning theology. But I could find no acceptance by those who had the power to bring more security. I could not find an audience or substantive support. I was burning out and fast. I was living in an apartment in Pasadena, a nice apartment, but one that was constantly noisy because the owner was remodeling other units to then raise the rent on all the units.

I was lost. I had no words of hope of my own. I did not know where to turn or who to turn to. But I still tried to pray, to hear from God what I was supposed to do.

On January 15, 2003 I was sitting on the small back porch of this apartment, and I wrote the following in my journal. It came to mind again today, so I’m posting it here:

We walk in a world not our own, possessing yet holding loosely, letting go all that binds, all that hinders the goal. We are the redeemers of time – what is fateful becomes fruitful, what is a fear and foe becomes a tool, a force, a power to be walked on like water.

Yet like water we sink into time, letting our faithlessness cover our heart. We sink, worried, fretful, possessive, greedy, grasping because time is drowning us in its overwhelming force. We must walk on time, above and outside, yet touching it, letting its waves be that which we place our feet upon. It is only through and by faith we become Time-Walkers – eternal beings who transcend yet are connected with this elusive dimension.

I am Peter stepped out of the boat, “Lord, Save me! Time is swallowing me!”

“Have Faith,” is the given response, “Walk forward neither looking to the right or left but at me, in my eyes. That which is lost is gained. That which is behind is yet ahead. That which is despaired is still a hope. Walk. Stand. Move. If you do not have faith, you will not stand.

“Time flows, but I am the one both in and out of time. Do not look to those trapped for assistance but to the one who has a stable hand. I am the one who brings order to disorder, disorder to order, upsetting and twisting around all things so that all things are directed towards me.”

“Lord, I am weary – I have not faith.”

“It is what you do when weary that marks a person of faith. Have faith, even though you have none. Sing and dance. Marvel at the beauty even in the smallest thing. Delight in the senses, taking in all in a fivefold way the encompassing bounty found even in this present sin-stained world. If this is stained, imagine what is possible when it is all cleansed.”

“Lord, I do not know where to walk or what to do.”

“Then stand, and keep standing, like a soldier waiting for orders. Stand and wait. Do what is before you and wait for counsel and guidance.”

“How long must I wait?”

“As long as you must.”

Life got worse. Much worse, really. I got more confused, more lost, more depressed. Then I stepped off the boat.

I’m still waiting, I think, as there’s an immense amount of questions still unanswered. Much of my life is in flux, and I don’t know where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing this time next year. I don’t know the answers to so many of the standard questions of a normal life.

But, because I stepped off the boat, on this day, here in Germany, I’m walking on water. And I see Jesus.

That’s something. That’s definitely something.

“Have courage,” he wrote near the end of the letter he sent me when I was beginning my PhD studies. That is a curious thing to say, I thought when I first read it, but again and again that comment has come to mind at points in which I was confronted with the challenge to conform, to do what everyone else was doing, to try to fit into what I thought was expected.

“Have courage,” Moltmann wrote to me. And I’ve tried to listen to his words, words he has certainly lived by in his own career in the field of theology.

In many small and a few big ways over the last few years I’ve made a shift in what I was doing, or what I dared to say or write, to follow this pattern.

And now, this week, I’m in Tubingen, having some afternoon chats with him. After spending a week in France.

When did I become this person who does these sorts of things? Indeed, I’m not sure I am that person. I’m the guy who left Pasadena, stopped making sense in pursuing a job for wage’s sake, moved back in with my parents. I’m the guy who only left the country twice in his whole life, while all of my friends traveled the world on this excursion or that adventure. I’m the guy who had trouble keeping a car that worked, or finding a job, or… any of the other things that gave a person an identity in this present world.

But, while a lot of that path didn’t make sense to others, or to me at times, there was this drive, this pursuit, this burn to answer the unanswered questions that lay in the depths of my soul. I couldn’t turn from them, I was chased by them, by the shadows and the void and the questions of faith which didn’t find resolution in any books I had read or sermons I had heard. There was more to this life, to this quest, to this way. So I stopped running from them. I turned around and said, “Have at me.”

And so I wandered away from what made sense, not because I had given up, but because I knew there was something more. I stepped in the the darkness and it enveloped me for a while.

But while there I heard whispers and songs and voices of hope crying out from the wilderness. I listened to men who spent their lives in the desert and women who found their voice in secluded convents. I found a burgeoning peace and a developing stillness, and a hope in the Spirit who calls especially in the wilderness, because it is in the wilderness where we are finally free to become the sorts of people Christ has called us to be. Where else will we go, Lord?

Now I’m here. Not because I’m of some great worth. Not because I’m the brightest or the best. I’m still a bit of an outsider. But, I had courage along the way to go the way that I knew the Spirit was pointing. Now I’m not lost, but I’m here in Europe with my beautiful wife, traveling around, enjoying the sights, and the food, and the conversations with good people in France and now in Germany.

I’ve been taking lots of pictures and I’m recording the conversations I’m having with Moltmann. Partly because I’m not sure I entirely believe any of this is real and I want to make sure, later on,it’s not just my overactive imagination.

The reality, though, I guess is that I did have hope. And I acted on this hope to pursue the life Christ was calling me towards, to take those unanswered questions of faith and life and identity and approach finding increasingly less opaque answers. To pursue the depths of our understanding of God’s work and the church by being willing to ask entirely hard and occasionally inappropriate questions. In my hope, I tried to add courage. Indeed, all throughout the Bible we find that it is courage that is the great gift of God for his people. Joshua, David, Elijah, Jesus, Paul, they all exhibited courage in the face of great trials, and it was through their courage they were willing to walk long enough and far enough to finally be at the place where they discovered the fullness of their hope realized in renewed life and victory. The resurrected life comes along the path of hope-filled courage, a courage to wait, a courage to act, a courage to be the person who, in each moment, walks in tune with the Spirit of Life.

All because it is the resurrected life that begins to make sense of the suffering and the terror and the doubt. All that has poured into the new this, shaping and guiding thoughts and questions. It is a place of redemption and renewal.

It is a place, today, of delight and encouragement. Thanks be to God.