Posts filed under ‘write’
February 26th, 2010 |
Good insights on prayer from Brian that got me thinking…
What would God say to me?
How would God actually respond if He was walking beside me, here in my neighborhood, listening to my verbal vomit? How would He reply to my claims, my grievances, my confessions, my version of the story? What would He discern between the lines? What truths would He point out, and which ones would He leave for another time? What questions would He ask me? What council would He offer? What would He say?
In my neighborhood I live in constant danger of any moment finding myself sharing a curb, or a nearby cafe table, or a place in line which exposes me to a certain indigenous species of oral predator who, if offered even accidental eye contact, will seize me in conversation and proceed to vomit forth an unceasing monologue, a narrative of complaint following some gnostic logic known only to themselves, which will, if I can contrive no escape, consume my entire afternoon. I feel an excruciating angst when cornered like this. I’m pinned between the agony of being bludgeoned by unceasing sentences and a desire to not be rude. I choose one of two responses. The first is when their narrative almost, but not quite, makes sense. In this case I find myself engaging the conversation against my better judgment, their half-logic like a will-o-wisp tempting me ever deeper into the woods. When I realize to my dismay that I am lost in the forest, hemmed in by an impenetrable thicket, I shrink into a pathetic ball of mm’s and huh’s, while anxiously scanning the horizon for some pause, some nano-second sliver of daylight in the monolithic tirade, my chance to make a break for it. The second option is to be rude right off the bat, to clearly and unmistakably abort the conversation. I am always surprised, when I opt for the latter response, at how well my assailant takes it. No reproach, no attack. Their fixation on me simply ceases, and they move on, presumably to find other prey. The disconnect is actually unnerving, it’s so complete.
I read the Bible, and in it I find an image of God. I can discern something about His character—He is just, He is truthful, He is wise, He is merciful, He is faithful, He is patient. I can learn something about His attitude towards believers who cry out to Him—that He hears, that He understands, that He cares, that He loves, forgives, disciplines. And I can know something about His plans for me—plans to prosper me, plans to complete His good work in me, plans to heal me, plans to bear much fruit in and through me. That’s an image of God for me to keep in mind, as I wonder what He would say to me, walking here beside me through my neighborhood, listening to me spill my guts.
Because left to myself I always imagine God in my own image. I see Him standing on the curb minding His own business when He accidentally meets my eye. Suddenly He is plunged beneath an outrageous cataract of unceasing, indecipherable and uninvited verbiage. I imagine Him forced to choose one of two responses—a half-hearted attempt to make sense of me while looking for an escape, or a curt and despising silence. And wouldn’t He be justified under the intolerable strafe of my monomaniacal tirade? And wouldn’t He feel the same chagrin at how quickly, how completely my attention drops from Him? Wouldn’t He be utterly bewildered and put off by this crazy person?
My understanding of You is so stunted by my own image. Please walk here beside me, and help me to see You as You are.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: jesus, prayer, write
February 17th, 2010 |
I think leaders for music worship have two roles that can often be in tension with one another. I’m calling the roles “worship leader” and “lead worshiper”, and I’ve written down some half-baked ideas about them. I’m sure others have already thought this through with much more wisdom and clarity.
My pastor Dick Kaufmann was the first person I heard use the term “lead worshiper”. I like the concept. The “lead worshiper” leads by example, showing people what worship looks like by actually worshiping. It brings to mind images of David going all Soul Train in his loin cloth before the Lord and not giving a rip about what anyone thought—his personal commitment to worshiping God an implicit invitation for others to join in. David was a great example of a lead worshiper in other ways, too—from ecstatic freak-outs, to brutally honest confession and repentance, to bold and reasoned proclamations of faith, to quavering pleas to a seemingly distant God. David led by example, and I think we should too. I also think we should lead by creating new expressions of worship. David’s Psalm 40 testimony that the Lord “put a new song in my mouth” suggests that God’s continuing work in our lives calls for our continuing response. We don’t thank a kind person once-and-for-all; we continue to thank him each time we receive his kindness. God’s new goodnesses engender new creative overflows in us. Since God’s mercies are inexhaustible, our source material for new expressions of worship is equally inexhaustible.
In this sense, new is good. Familiarity can breed contempt. Or at least when something becomes rote and expected it fails to captivate our hearts in the way it did when it was new. A true statement becomes cliché through repetition, and the truth gets obscured by the cliché. To me, this is reason enough to be cliché-o-clast, a cliché smasher. As worshipers, we should be on the lookout for the ways familiarity has dulled us to the incisive truths of the gospel. Where we discover dullness, we should set about finding fresh ways to rediscover the truth and craft new heartfelt responses to it. New songs should be written (or learned). New forms explored. Old songs should be reworked so their wonders shine bright again. I am not at all saying that old things should be done away with, but that the canon of God’s praise should be forever expanding. Not just on a cosmic level but on a local level, too. The congregation should be challenged to learn new songs, different songs. A lead worshiper leads by continually proclaiming God’s glory in new ways because he/she is continually experiencing God’s goodness in new ways. One of the awesomenesses of Pentecost was that God reversed the curse of Babel not by reinstating a single language, but by redeeming the variety. We have a God who pushes out into the frontiers. A lead worshiper gets to be part of that Pentecostal un-Babeling, leading the congregation to proclaim the gospel in new tongues. Because of this, I think a lead worshiper is right to lead in ways that are new, exploratory and challenging to the prevailing culture.
On the other hand, a worship leader (not a lead worshiper) has the responsibility to lead people in ways they can follow, in ways that enable them to participate. In this sense, the old—the familiar, the known—is good. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit moved the disciples to speak not in incomprehensible syllables, but in the languages intimately familiar to the people present. In the Psalms, Israel’s hymnbook, we find evidence that corporate worship should be orderly and the participants should know their parts. In contrast, if each week the worship leader strips to his underwear to sweatily dance unto the Lord, leaving me baffled and uncomfortable in the pew, I won’t attend that church for very long. No matter how earnest the leader, I need to be led somewhere I can follow.
This makes me think that old worn paths are sometimes the best. They are the way of measured, practiced, expected steps which if earnestly followed will lead us into a dance of worship. In a dance we learn all the steps in order to forget them. Once familiar, these steps free us to dance as David danced—sweeping us up into all the variety of his earnest worship. Order, liturgy, familiarity are means of grace, used by a wonderfully kind God who is willing to gently woo a bunch of shy wallflowers. He incorporates our hesitating need for familiar steps into His unexpected and graceful movements.
I strongly suspect my work as a worship leader is nothing mystical. I’m just a musician providing melody and tempo so the real work of worship can be conducted by the Dance Master. I see evidence of it every week. For example, at any given moment there is a very good chance that I am not the “lead worshiper” in the room. I am likely to be totally distracted by a cataract of unworshippy thoughts—”Am I going to hit this next chord?” “I’m irritated that half the band was late today” “Should we get an EQ and compressor for the monitors?” Or even, “Gosh my voice sounds really good today!” Or, “Cool! I wrote this song and now everyone is singing it!” Ugh. In those moments I am a terrible lead worshiper. But here’s the thing. In those moments I can look out at the congregation and see people worshiping. In spite of me, they have met God and He has swept them up into His dance. This constantly blows my mind, how God takes my moldy loaf and rotten little fish and turns them into a banquet.
God works in spite of me. From this I can glean two things. First, although it is very possible (and lamentable) that I am a poor lead worshiper, by the grace of God I’m doing okay as a worship leader. Simply by providing quality music for the dance that is going on, I am helping God’s people participate in worship. Praise God for that. Second, if the main point is to help the congregation dance, it’s okay to play the music that the congregation dances to best. A worship leader does everyone a disservice (including God) if in his eagerness to smash clichés he has no awareness of what will actually help the congregation worship. All evils of “church consumerism” aside, a congregation’s expectations, their culture, even their preference for certain songs and instrumentation, are the dance steps with which they respond to God’s call to worship. A worship leader should respect that.
So where does this leave me? I feel like I’m triangulating between two stars. As a leader in worship music, I think I should be continually creative, challenging myself and others to craft, seek out and embrace new ways to reflect and respond to God’s goodness. This is scary. I also think I should be humble and content to play the same old song for the millionth time if it helps one clumsy soul (maybe my own) get on the dance floor. In its own way this is also scary. Knowing how much to do one and how much to do the other is difficult. I need wisdom and discernment to be both a lead worshiper and a worship leader.
Thoughts?
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: jesus, music, write
May 11th, 2009 |
Act 1, Scene 1. 2AM, a darkened bedroom in the Gray household.
Me: [startled awake by creepy dream] Ah!
Mellie: [groggy] What’s wrong?
Me: [shaky voice] Ick. Bad dream.
Mellie: Mmm.
Me: [snuggling closer] It was really bad. I need to be comforted.
Mellie: Well don’t tell it to me. I don’t want to be scared. [falls asleep]
Me: [lies awake, staring at the partially-opened closet door]
Fade to black.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: mellie, nonsense, write
March 22nd, 2009 |
God is sovereign and God is good.
Ever since our scare with Mellie and cancer, I have been tripping out on this. The two concepts get along great while everything is sunshine and lollipops. But when life falls apart it is really difficult to believe both of them at the same time. If God is sovereign it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the things that cause our suffering are part of his design. Sickness, war, injustice, loss, misfortune—he is able to stop them, but he doesn’t. How can God be good and still let these bad things happen? How can we be comforted in our suffering?
I don’t like being hit over the head with Romans 8:28, the one about God working all things for our good. Don’t get me wrong, that verse is a great encouragement to me—when I’m clear enough to think it through. But the way it normally gets used sounds like Christianese doublespeak for saying, “Cheer up! Bad is really Good!” It’s just a flat contradiction of what I’m actually experiencing, what I’m actually feeling. Most of the time I don’t find that helpful. But recently I found, and oh how I prefer, 2 Corinthians 1:3-7. The God of all comfort, who comforts us in (not in denial of) our troubles.
The real triumph of good over bad is so much richer than finding out that “bad” really was “good” afterall. The richness is fully illustrated in the paradox of the cross. “There on the cross tis fairest drawn, in precious blood and crimson lines” (thank you, Isaac Watts). The suffering and death of Jesus is the worst thing that ever happened. The suffering and death of Jesus is the best thing that ever happened. These contradictory statements are (I believe) both true. And the mystery that they somehow fit together is a deeper well of comfort for me than any attempt of mine to believe that bad is actually good. Because suffering is real—it aches, it dislocates, it grinds, numbs, destroys, it has real consequences. I am not going to pretend that revulsion, avoidance and mourning are not proper responses to bad things. I see Jesus in Gethsemane, sweating blood, desperate for a way out. But I also see Him on the other side of the tomb, with scars in His hands and side. The wonder is that instead of erasing the suffering of the cross—instead of somehow making it go away—Jesus’ resurrection redeemed His suffering. It was made new. The resurrection has such power that it transformed the foul blotch of Jesus’ shameful death into the brightest jewel of God’s glory and the centerpiece of His plan to rescue the world.
Think about that. The cross was the worst evil ever done. God knew it. But God was able to turn the tables on evil so completely that the worst Bad became the greatest Good. If that is true, what suffering is He unable to redeem? Should I not trust him with my own suffering and the suffering of those I love? Trust Him not to erase it, not to make it go away, but to redeem it.
Bad is bad. It really is. But Good is so good that it transforms the worst things into the best things. That is real cause for hope. That is sweet comfort. God is sovereign and God is good.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: cancer, jesus, write
March 2nd, 2009 |
appendix, one kidney, one lung, half a pancreas, bone marrow, a good portion of your liver, tonsils, gall bladder, ear muscles, thyroid gland, adrenal glands, vomeronasal organ (look it up), tail bone, wisdom teeth.
The above is a list of body parts which you can have removed and still maintain a manageable lifestyle. From our experience, one thyroid gland equals one week’s worth of friends bringing us tasty home-cooked meals. There are 14 items on this list. That’s 14 weeks worth of food. Multiplied by two people, that’s a solid 7 month stockpile of supplies.
In these tough economic times it’s good to know what you can count on.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: cancer, community, mellie, write
February 27th, 2009 |
No one looks healthy in a hospital. The confident surgeon, the caring nurse, the visiting friend, the coffee cart worker, the smiling child in her mother’s arms—all of them sickly. The proximity of the suffering patients and their grief-stricken families, glimpses of red-rimmed eyes and shattered countenance behind swishing curtains, pacing past knotted clots of coagulated whispers in the hall—the dying diffuses through the air, bending the light in some unflattering way, highlighting an ugly commonality. The same broken lines etched across our faces, the same hinting hue in the soft blue shadows beneath our eyes. We are all residents of the terminal ward.
Standing in the bathroom outside the third floor Post-Op, recognizing these things in my own reflected face, doesn’t prepare me for her pale lips and large dark eyes swimming above the gauze-obscured wound at her throat, iodine-yellow. She is the color of milk. There is a dark red line drawn across white bedsheets, beginning at her neck and ending at a machine crouching in the corner making sucking noises. We are in a crowded room full of clatter and wheeled gurneys and beeping machines and hurrying people. Her eyes unfocus, slip off me to the movement behind. God, her eyes are so dark and so large. The air crowds in, bending the light.
When Jesus Christ walked the earth he healed our diseases. He multiplied our food and we were full. He calmed our storms, he restored our community, he freed us from spiritual oppression. He pulled the money we needed from a fish’s mouth. We had no lack of wisdom. Even death obeyed him. He claimed he could forgive our sin.
All of this, every conceivable need of our sickly race, met in himself. And yet he had the audacity to say, straight-faced, It is for your benefit that I am going away.
And he did it. He left us here, in sickness, in hunger, in poverty, in conflict, in sorrow, in hospitals, in ugly commonality, for our benefit. He left us here, where his own sufferings flow over into our lives, in between resurrections, for our benefit. He left us here, part of a body and in the company of a counselor, for our benefit.
It is a strange gift, and I can’t get my mind around it, lying here at 3:00AM on a makeshift bed of chairs, red-eyed behind swishing curtains, listening for her breathing.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: cancer, jesus, mellie, write
February 23rd, 2009 |
flickr | driving directions
We took an expedition out to the Three Sisters Waterfalls, in the Cuyamaca mountains outside Julian. One last hurrah for Mellie’s sick little thyroid. In a few days the doctors will chase away the cancer with their knives. The peaks are dusted white with snow. The gorge opens at our feet, a zig-zag scar narrowing to a box canyon in the distance. We can see the falls glinting in the sunlight. Who knew this place was here, just fifty-five miles outside San Diego?
One hour and we’re down a steep trail, from the car to the stream at the bottom of the gorge. Another hour of rock-hopping up to the top-most of the three waterfalls. With the recent rains the water is gushing. The top sister plunges a forty-foot freefall from a clean overhang down into a round echoey bowl, drumming and rushing, swirling and then squeezing into a narrow chute exiting off at an angle down the creasy face of the second sister, gathering speed, hitting her stone lip and spraying out in a bright arch down into a long rippled pool. Slowed, the sloshy water leans up against a wide edge. Slipping over, it spreads itself out across the bumpy granite all white and intricate like lace, twenty feet wide and sliding down soft into the lowermost green pool.
From the top, beside the misty bowl with the sun on our PB&J fingers, we rest and watch the stream make multiplication among the red and brown boulders, tumbling away silver along the canyon floor.
Then we turn to answer the challenge. We gather flint-jawed and scrunchy-toed to the edge of the elder sister’s pool. Into icy water, snow-melt squeezing lung aching groin clutching numb-fingered against the swirling current, fighting—winning!—to see what is behind the thunderous curtain of water. Stinging skin, squealing like little girls, standing knee deep on a sandy bank for a moment, finding it, wide-eyed, taking it for our own. Then flinging ourselves into the icy numbness again, rib cracking pushed by the flow toward sunny rocks. And out, breathless, steel nippled, hooting and blowing. Spread out flat against warm stone, pasty white February bodies goose bumped and cursing the shreds of cloud obscuring the sun. Laughing together with her, I feel clean.
Before church the pastors and elders gather with us in a quiet room upstairs. Oil on her forehead and prayers over her. Reasoning with God. My hand against her back is warm and moist. God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our trouble, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we have received. The sufferings of Christ that flow over into our lives. Later, downstairs, the water leans up against my eyes, and then slipping over, it spreads itself out across my face, intricate like lace.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: adventure, cancer, mellie, write
February 20th, 2009 |
I’m not naturally a community person. Which is funny, because my job, which I love, is all about fostering, building and organizing community at Uptown Church. But left to myself I tend to keep to myself.
For the most part, that is. Having Mellie in my life is a notable exception. Whether it’s traveling across the country or walking around the block, there is no question that things go better with Mellie. I probably need to tell her this more. I think she believes that my favorite feel-good romantic comedy film is Into the Wild. Not true. Now, if that guy had an awesome cutie like Mellie with him in that bus in Alaska, just the two of them eating the correct herbs and saying “Hey Babe, let’s get this moose meat back to camp, pronto!” that would be different. That might be Oscar quality.
Or it might be Grizzly Man. I don’t know.
But the point is, I’m not naturally wired to want to “do” life with others. All this stuff that real community requires time, energy, listening, caring, trust, emotional bandwidth, permeable boundaries, sharing burdens, forgiveness. Not my forte. And it’s not just that I’m bad at those things. It’s the fact that in community those things are two-way, not just one-way. Therein lies my true incompetence. You don’t just give forgiveness, you have to receive it, too. You don’t just take someone else’s burden, you have to give them yours. It’s messy. It’s sticky. It’s cooked spaghetti, all tangled up. You try to fork out three noodles and you get fifty, so you twirl and twirl and only succeed in gathering more so that now it looks like you have stabbed a large ball of yarn with your fork and in rash despair you are driven to cram the entire wad into your mouth and hunch down over the plate clenching the edge of your chair to suppress gag reflexes as the ten-foot long knotted mass slides down your throat with the sauce scalding your neck.
I prefer my spaghetti dry and straight. See how happily the little spaghettis live in their plastic home? They are together, but separate. Not quite in community, but perhaps close enough. I can select a single noodle, if I so choose. I can examine it for quality and decide it I’d like to make it part of my meal. If it displeases me, behold, I can leave it to be pecked by crows.
I can tell you all about the riches of community. Heck, I can even believe in the riches of community. Nevertheless, the strange truth is, when left to myself I will keep my spaghetti dry. Weird and stunted, I know.
Into this small world comes a lump. Then a phone call from Mellie’s endocrinologist. Maybe cancer. Definitely surgery. Soon. She’ll need to take a pill and come in for checkups. For forever. She’ll have a scar on her beautiful neck. Ahh, how do you process this stuff?
Mellie actually seems to be doing well. She’s concerned, a little nervous about the surgery, aware of what it means. But she’s upbeat, positive. It’s cool to see.
I’m under a heavy blanket. It’s hard to move my mind around what’s happening, it’s hard to pray about it. I keep thinking about the scar that will appear on her neck. I think it’s just the most concrete thing my mind can latch on to. I need more than this scar.
We put the word out to some folks. And the response has been good, even amazing. Calls and emails and texts of good wishes and prayers. Good in and of themselves. But look, let me explore this. In an odd way, I think they have also provided for me a means to navigate this dense and unfamiliar terrain. Instead of relying on my own perspective—limited, down here in a ditch, hemmed in by circumstances—Instead of my own perspective, I’m getting reports from you. Different perspectives from higher ground. Ashley has been emailing us—she’s been through this very surgery and she’s letting us know what it looks like on the other side. Forrest sent a link to an article John Piper wrote on the eve of his prostate cancer surgery—perspective-shifting thoughts on not wasting your cancer. Chris prayed for us over IM—that’s a new one for me. Kiley is putting together a schedule of friends to bring us meals so we can take it easy next week—a reminder of how well we are provided for. Listen, without this community intertwined around us, I wouldn’t have these perspectives. I wouldn’t have the help I need to process this stuff. All I would have is that scar. Does that make sense?
So it’s true that I’m not naturally a community person. I can tell you about the riches of community. I even believe in the riches of community. But right now I am experiencing them for myself. It’s a change of perspective. Thank you. It’s a good lesson.
Entry Filed under: Blog Tags: cancer, community, mellie, write
