pluck

Interesting to notice how I've been resisting this second post. My "familiar spirit"---what a friend helped me identify as an addiction to grandiosity---has been urging me to wait till I'm really ready. First you need to find all those quotations, says that spirit, the ones that have been echoing in your mind and giving you the itch to write. Once you have those in hand you'll have a grand essay to present---without them it's just uncredentialed you, sharing your thoughts outside the validating company of those real (published) writers.

But today I wrestled with that dark angel and threw her aside. I sat on my front porch on an impossibly beautiful morning and journaled through my resistance. It's spring-to-summer in New-England....with the blue of this sky and the crispness of this air you'd think it was autumn, but no, there's fresh green around us and a high sun above us. The deep cold lies behind. Life says "come on, let's go!"

And after the decision was made---forget the quotations, I'm just going to write---I reached for My Utmost for one last input before starting my output. The more I read of the May 15 entry, the bigger my smile. Guess I'll be sharing a quotation after all:

Peter says--"Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you." Rise to the occasion; do the thing. It does not matter how it hurts as long as it gives God the chance to manifest Himself in your mortal flesh. May God not find the whine in us any more, but may He find us full of spiritual pluck and athleticism, ready to face anything He brings.

Blessed Oswald Chambers, with his quaint, old-fashioned language and his piercing insights in what it means to follow the Way! I love the picture he conjures up: a spiritual Rudy, bouncing up after some giant linebacker has smashed him to the ground, full of pluck and asking for more! I can be like Rudy. I don't have to listen to the dark angel who tells me to lie there and save myself from the next hit because it's just too scary and too painful. I can rise the occasion and do the thing!

But perhaps you're not seeing the connection between fiery trials and blog posts. You see, if I were to follow what the Bible calls in Romans 8 "the mind set on the flesh" I wouldn't be writing a blog at all. What does Paul the apostle mean by this strange phrase? For me, "the flesh" is perfectly defined by a concept I learned in a transformational training called Breakthrough (offered by the Association for Christian Character Development, accd.org)---it is human nature to want to "look good, feel good, be right, and be in control." We all want those things, and left to ourselves we all spend our lives trying to have them! Sometimes I do get to feel good & look good even while I'm following the Spirit's call to live a life of Love. The mind of the flesh shows up when I put the natural impulse to serve my human nature above what Love says to do.

So it has been with the call to say yes to God through this blog. In my flesh I hate putting my words out for just anyone to read, because I'm terrified of feeling out of control, terrified of looking or feeling foolish. In the Spirit I've wanted to share lots of things--wonderful, inspiring truths that have been such a blessing to me--but the flesh has procrastinated for two weeks now. Finally, this morning on an impossibly beautiful day, I faced the flesh and named my fear before God. In my journaling prayers I was reminded that I don't glorify Him by what I consider successful outcomes--by looking good, feeling good, being right, or being in control--but by my willingness to "face anything He brings," even if it's uncomfortable. And if I waver, give in for a while to the flesh, I can still glorify Him by having the pluck to stand up and go again.

Going public

Back in the day--over 30 years ago now--my friends and I would ask each other, "If you could do any kind of work, what would it be?" My answer every time was, "I'd be a writer." Not just any kind of writer, I always explained, but a writer of essays. A towering literary hero to me then (and now) was C.S. Lewis, and I longed to be like him---profound and poignant and masterful in expressing the struggles and glories of living out his faith in Jesus Christ.

Lewis himself gave me the words, through a character in Till We Have Faces, to express what I longed for as a writer:

...to say the very thing you mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean, that's the whole art and joy of words.

Yes, said my fervent heart, yes, that's it! To say the very thing I mean---that's what God must want me to do for my life's work!! But somehow, my very longing became the obstacle that kept me from writing. If you believe, as I did, that any thought worth sharing with the world has to be a profound one, then "to say the very thing you mean" requires that your writings also be profound. Every writing.

I hardly ever wrote letters to my friends (back then that's what we did to communicate with people far away), because each letter was a laborious exercise in deep thinking and the most careful choosing of words. By the time I was in college I was excruciatingly concerned with saying the very thing I meant, and the worst possible scenario was when I was writing a paper on a topic I related to personally---say, for instance, comparing St. Paul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in their treatments of the dialectical nature of faith (what can I say? I was a Religious Studies major!). I remember to this day the agonizing hours I spent editing and re-editing each "profound" sentence. It's as if I was bound by chains, forced by my own longing to be the operator of some infernal machine: must say.... the very thing...I mean....must say....the very thing...

I've decided it's time to drop the last of those chains. The God who saved me 30+ years ago from self-worship has also spent those decades healing me from self-importance. It's time to thank him publicly by responding to His eternal "yes"---His unconditional love and kindness---with a "yes" of my own. So I'm going to write about faith and hope and transformation and what it means, in my life, to choose His life and truth and way.

Whether you find me "profound" in my writing is--truly!--of no consequence. I'd prefer that, of course, but my commitment to these pages is about my commitment to Him. If my writing is imperfect then it's simply reflecting who I am. God still says yes to me in my mess, and I will honor Him with my heart and mind and soul and strength--even if I don't manage, ever, to say the very thing I mean...