Before I write anything, I'd ask you to read the following words from today's entry in Henri Nouwen's daily meditations:
______ Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves, "I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write." Writing is the giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to "give away" on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches. ______ So, for as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a writer. I suppose it's the one "what do I want to be when I grow up" thread that runs through my life all the way back to when I was a kid. It's the thread that never frayed or got loose and cut away. I'm sure it's the one thing I wake up each morning, still, thinking this is what I want to be when I grow up. For the longest time, though, I want to be a writer meant I want to sell a lot of books. I want to be featured in Oprah's book club. I want to sit in a chair at Barnes and Noble with a coffee and watch people snag my book from a shelf and take it to the cashier. During this pandemic, I've done two things consistently. I've been spending a little - or A LOT - of time each day running across virtual Tennessee. And, most mornings, I've come to this space and started my day writing. To be clear, I've come here to start my day writing, not to be a writer. Henri Nouwen's meditation this morning gets to the heart of a lot that I've discovered about writing the last few months. Things I've been coming to know for a long time, but things that have been driven into the core of who I am the last few months. For those of you who have been following along in the mornings, you have unknowingly - or maybe you've sensed it - been on a journey with me. I, like many of you, have faced challenges during this pandemic. Many days they've come at me from all angles of life. So, as I started writing each morning, I found some comfort in discovering these spaces within me that I wasn't previously fully aware of. They were often safe places. Places that comforted me. Each morning I get up, I feel drawn to visit those places again, and who knows, maybe discover some new ones. As I've written out loud about this journey for anyone choosing to follow along, many days I've forgotten there are people by my side. Reading and visiting these spaces too. Many days I've gotten so lost in these spaces that I lose sight of the reality I have company on these journeys to my spaces. But then someone will reach out, and they'll say I needed to hear that today. They'll say those words came at just the right time. More and more, what I hear them saying is, I needed to visit that space in my own life today as well. In those moments, I love writing far more than I think I'd ever love being a writer. Because it is my hope that my writing multiplies. That it helps people discover beautiful and comforting places within themselves that prompt them to help others discover those spaces within their own selves. Writing is my best escape from the noise of the world. Writing is my prayer, many mornings. Writing is where I discover those quiet spaces that more and more I discover are spaces that hold the best me. They are the loving me and the kind me and the generous me I wish I could be - the me I long to be - every single moment outside of my pen and paper. Although that's not possible, I suppose - we all have a human side constantly begging us to be ugly - writing brings me closer to being that person than anything else. I'm not really sure what space I'm visiting this morning. I think it's a space of gratitude. Gratitude for the chance to write. Gratitude for each of you who have visited some of these spaces with me. I think I'd also like to encourage each of you to write. Maybe it's in a journal. Maybe it's on post it notes that you stick on the bathroom mirror. Maybe it's a blog or social media or hey, maybe it's a book someone will pull off a self at Barnes and Noble. I just believe writing is a place where we can all discover our best spaces - our best selves - that the world so desperately needs right now. "Once we dare to "give away" on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches."
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8/28/2020 0 Comments We never lose our right to forgiveIf you're like me, you don't have to scroll too far down your Facebook timeline to read a conversation or a heated debate or just plain old ugly finger-pointing about freedoms.
My friends of faith are often in the middle of those conversations. Sometimes their voices are the loudest. I don't say that critically. The beauty of our country is we get to choose the freedoms that are most important to us and we have a lot more options than many places in the world when it comes to choosing how we fight for them. But Henri Nouwen's words this morning capture some freedoms I never hear people worried about losing. In these ongoing battles about freedom, I never hear people say someone is trying to take away my right to forgive others. And I don't hear panic about the possibility I'll no longer have the freedom to serve my neighbor, or form a new bond of fellowship with them. In my life, the greatest freedom fighting example I have is Christ. And, I think the greatest example of his fight for freedom happened on the cross. A man losing his right to life at the hands of the government leaders at that time, demonstrated freedom right up until his last breath. As the soldiers who were stealing his right to live gambled beneath him to determine which of them would lay claim to his garments, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." These soldiers were not going to deny Jesus the spiritual freedom he had to forgive. When the criminal who was being crucified next to Jesus said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom," Jesus responded to him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." Even as he was dying, Jesus was exercising his freedom to form a new bond with a fellow human. Then, as Jesus took his final breath, he cried out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” In a final display of freedom, Jesus honored the opportunity to serve his father. Even in the midst of the ultimate oppression, Jesus found the ultimate way to serve God, and through Him, serve us. I think this final scene in Jesus' life is full of lessons. And I think one of the important ones is this: Yes, as a church and a body of faith, we need to fight for our freedoms. But when the fight for what we fear might be taken away becomes all consuming, and it blinds us to the freedoms that can NEVER be taken away - the freedom to forgive and to serve and connect with others in love - then maybe we're fighting too hard. Or even fighting for the wrong things. Jesus didn't die fighting for his freedoms, he died exercising them. I for one think he intended for us to find spiritual freedom in that. I think as a way to use humor to combat the endless parade of hardships and challenges and unprecedented times that have come with this year, 2020 has become it's own punchline.
I've followed the weather news this weekend. Parts of the Gulf of Mexico will experience two hurricanes in a matter of a couple of days this week. Normally, this would seem unfathomable. But the collective response seems to be - with resignation - oh, that's just 2020 acting up again. I guess personally, I've had a lot of 2020's in my life. This year just seems to come with different flavors of hardship. But I tell people all the time, the mind and the body and the heart - they don't know the difference between one hardship and the next - they just sense and feel burdened. They feel the weight of trying to adapt to and survive what life is throwing at them. I guess in many ways, I feel like I've spent a great deal of my life preparing for 2020. And my hope isn't in knowing I survived those years leading up to this one, my hope is in seeing what God created out of them. There are some beautiful words in the 61st chapter of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes." Beauty instead of ashes.... I have some ashes in my life. But as I look back, they are no longer ashes. The ashes I once felt buried in are now beautiful works of art. All I can see are the times in my life where God took those ashes and drew pictures of hope and with them wrote stories of redemption. I look back on those ashes and hear the echoes of me pleading with God - help me overcome. And in those echoes I can FEEL God's answer more than I can hear it. I feel the strength of a faith that says life isn't about overcoming, it's about living with a trust that everything becomes beautiful. Not EVEN the ashes, but ESPECIALLY the ashes. As challenging as life is - and you are no joking matter 2020 - I continually remind myself to ask the right question. My right question isn't when will this all end, when will life get back to normal, when will this cloud of ashes finally move on. My right question is, oh what beauty God are you making out of this one. I don't know for sure how hard things will get. I don't know for sure how long this will go on. The only thing I really know for sure is one day I will look back and say, God, what you did there, that is truly beautiful. You truly do place on us a crown of beauty instead of ashes. Some mornings God all but snags the pen out of my hand and says, I need you to reflect and write about THIS. I need you to hear THIS. I need you to share THIS.
Yesterday, I read the words in the image below in Seth Godin's daily blog. Then, this morning, I open up my Bob Goff devotional and I read this: I'd rather have a couple of ideas fail than have a faith that won't try. Many of you know I've spent the summer running a virtual race across Tennessee and back. Every day, I run. Then I log the miles that I run here in Virginia in a database that plots my location on a digital map of Tennessee. When the founders of this virtual race came up with the idea, they suspected maybe a couple of hundred people would sign up. They ended up with over 19,000 people from all over the world. All summer long I've followed social media groups and news feeds of people who have been running this race. One common theme has emerged among literally thousands of these runners. That theme is: I never thought it was possible to run the kind of miles I'm running. I never thought I was capable of this.... As a runner who has discovered the domino effect of realizing you're capable of more than you once thought, it's no understatement to say this race has permanently altered the direction of lives all around the world. People will go on to live much bolder and more fulfilled than they ever would have without this race. All because a few people had an idea and were willing to put it out there. The folks who put it out there are directors of real-life and in person races. I wonder now, looking back, what would have happened when their races got cancelled because of COVID, if they'd just decided there are no other options. Or, if they'd have said, this whole virtual idea will never fly - running races can only happen in person - that's the PERFECT option - let's just ride out the COVID storm until we can meet and run together again in person. This morning, I'm wondering how many people out there aren't tackling the best available option in life because it doesn't feel or look or sound like the perfect one? How many people are holding tight to an idea or a change in life because the path isn't stamped with a guarantee of happily ever after? And, and there is this - how many people out there are missing out on the chance to discover THEIR happily ever after because WE'RE holding on to the ideas or the direction in life that might help them get there? But that's not what these virtual race directors did. They went with the best available option, without fear of how imperfect that option might be. And for many people, guess what - it's turned into the perfect option. I've learned a couple of things about my faith the last several years. One is this - whatever my picture of the perfect outcome of some idea or some attempt or some change in my life is - God always finds a way to show me I was underestimating the potential of it all. His outcomes are always better than the ones I imagined. You become less prone to waiting around for perfect when you realize you don't have any idea what perfect even is. And there is this as well. So many of the ideas or the changes we contemplate in life - we think about them in terms of how will this impact me? What will this outcome add to my life? And I don't think there's anything unreasonable about that. But maybe we are a little more motivated, inspired, and even maybe - there's a sense of obligation to try - to attempt - when we begin to understand that those who benefit the most from our ideas - even the ideas that don't turn out perfect - are the people around us. When we begin to think of things through the potential impact on others, we don't have to be concerned with perfect, we simply have to care. This team that put together this virtual race across Tennessee - they simply had an idea that would give a couple of hundred people a chance to run after all the races they'd been training for got cancelled. The outcome? Several thousand people now know they've been sitting around in life waiting for the perfect day to start running. Several thousand people are now far less likely to ever wait around for perfect again. Don't you wait on it either... Yesterday, while I was running, I saw the clouds begin to darken to the west. I periodically checked the radar on my phone's weather app to make sure I didn't need to make a mad dash toward home. At least as mad as my dashes can get these days. Each check assured me I was good; the storms were well in the distance.
As I made my way toward the middle of Ashland, I started to see a strange cloud rolling my way. I checked the radar - nothing imminent. But undetected by technology, this cloud just kept coming and coming - like a train without its whistle blowing - until it was suddenly on top of me. I turned the corner to make my way down the tracks. There was a huddle of locals holding their morning coffee and looking to the sky. I looked up. One of the fellas looked at me and simply said, "cool, huh?" I snapped a picture. Then I stood there and stared. I searched the path of this shelf of a cloud from as far as I could see out in front of me to as far as I could see when I turned and followed it behind me. It was both beautiful and intimidating. And then it was gone. Just like that it moved on. I imagined, moving on to grab the delight of someone else along its trek. This morning, when I opened my Bob Goff devotional, I read these words: God made beauty to leave us speechless. He dazzles us so we'll pause and listen for his voice. Coincidence? One of the beauties of running is that you can get into a flow that becomes almost hypnotic. The world as you know it - the one that can both haunt you and celebrate you - disappears and you're left in a quiet place of your own. I suppose there are a lot of activities in life that can lure us to our quiet places like that. I need those places. It's why I run. But maybe they cause us to miss life at times too. I think God sometimes takes the liberty to remind me that it's not quiet I'm looking for. It's not the mere absence of noise and bustle and chaos that I'm running toward - seeking. I think sometimes God wants to stop me in my tracks and remind me that it's peace I'm looking for. It's the chance to be and feel restored. If even for a moment. And, God is every once in awhile wanting to remind me - you won't find that in your voice. Not in your world. You'll only find it in mine. I started to make my way down the tracks. After a minute or so, I noticed the cloud out in front of me was gone. I turned and looked behind me, not breaking stride, and nothing remained but your ordinary cloudy day. I was back to a normal run. I was back to my own world. This morning, when I read the title of Goff's devotional, as much as I realized God sure dazzled me for a moment yesterday morning, I'm also asking myself if I missed a chance to hear him. I'm wondering if I missed a chance to be soothed by his voice instead of being mesmerized by his creation. Because this morning, I hear God quietly saying, that wasn't about the cloud, it was about you. It was about God saying, if I can bring this ominous cloud into your life out of nowhere - and then just as quickly move it on out, what can't I bring into your life seemingly out of nowhere? And what can't I look into your life and see, he says to me - the burdens or the struggles or the challenges - and say to them - move on along now. God's voice doesn't always show up with its whistle blowing. But sometimes the most important words are his quietest ones. Even when they come in the echo of a cloud long gone.... Andy Stanley is the lead pastor of North Point Church in Atlanta, a campus of churches with over 40,000 members. Stanley and his leadership team recently made the decision to cancel in-person worship for the rest of the year. Needless to say, in this current climate, that was met with some strong opinions. Apparently, many of those opinions came from his own congregation.
Stanley used his sermon Sunday to address the thinking behind their decision. For Stanley, what it boiled down to is the idea that a culture wars faith is a perversion of Christianity. A culture wars faith is in it to win it. His church, he said, was never going to be in it to win it. Stanley went on to say: The church looks more like Christ when we are defending other people's rights rather than our own. The church looks more like Christ when we are giving away rather than demanding our way. The final strong point he made in his message, which I'll include a link to in the comments, is that Jesus didn't play to win - at least not the way we look at the game - Jesus played to lose. Everything Jesus did was to sacrifice his opportunity to win so that WE COULD WIN. If Jesus was about winning to make his point, he would have climbed down off the cross instead of dying on it. He would have defeated the army crucifying him instead of asking his father to forgive them. So after listening to this sermon while I was running, I didn't find myself thinking about the church, I found myself thinking about me. What are you in this life for, Keith? Are you in it to win it - to be aligned with a certain side - the side you think is the right side?Are you in life to defend your rights or the rights of the people around you?Are you in this life to give away or demand your own way? As a Christian, there is really only one measure of victory for me. Victory for me is living a life that looks like Christ. Victory for me is knowing every day just how far short of that I fall, knowing every day just how much that impacts me - the negative way falling short makes me see the world and the negative way it makes me feel - and knowing the answer to that is turning to the Christ I so want to look like. Stanley pointed out that Jesus' disciples, no matter how many times he told them, didn't believe Jesus when he said he was going to be crucified. Because in their minds, that would be defeat. They just couldn't comprehend how a Jesus who said he was going to be the king over all would willingly die on a cross. Because they too - they too were living with an in it to win it mentality. But for Jesus, the cross was victory. Jesus spent his ministry telling the people he met - and US - that his idea of winning was sacrificing all of us for the good of others. Jesus on that cross - that was Jesus saying I meant it - this is what winning looks like. Jesus was saying the only right I came to fight for was the right to serve others - the nails in my hands and in my feet - they are my "proved my point" moments. I too have only one point to prove in life. Oh, I get sidetracked by a bunch of other points. Man do I get sidetracked. I, too, get caught up in the in it to win it culture. But as I was walking and reflecting on Stanley's sermon, I was reminded that in my writing and in my conversations and in my interactions here and there - I only have one point to make in this life. That point is that my life always has been and still remains quite broken. And for me, after years of searching for a fix behind many different doors, there has been no fix for me personally more healing - more present in every moment of my life - than the man on the cross who says to his father on my behalf, every single day: father forgive him, for he knows not what he does. Saying that out loud, for me and for you, that is my point. Remembering it as I tackle this day - in what will be in many spaces an in it to win it space - that is my challenge.... I have a friend who is always helpful to talk to. I've concluded that what makes her so helpful to me is that she's faced an incredible amount of tragedy and suffering in her life. Because of that, we rarely have conversations built on avoiding struggles. We always get right to the part about dealing with them.
I think one thing I've noticed in these times - and plug in your description of these times: pandemic, racial reckonings, political season - is how desperately people want to maintain order and reason in their lives. That in itself isn't unreasonable. Who doesn't like a life of order? The problem comes, I believe, when people pour all their energy into living a life that will somehow guarantee them a path that circumvents hardship and tragedy. Over the years, I've become familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and their 12 step program. I've talked with hundreds of people who claim this program saved their lives. Do you know what the first of the 12 steps is? It's "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable." I should add here, many of the people who I've talked to that credit this program with saving their lives weren't battling an alcohol problem. Many of them had other areas in their lives that had become unmanageable and they applied the AA steps to it. For all of them, though, the first step was admitting I am powerless. The second step? "Came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." By step two, they were already exploring their spiritual depths. This friend of mine, she's never going to leave me feeling like life is helpless. She's been through enough in her life, though, to know I'm not the best person to help me. She's always going to move me quickly along the process of letting go of a need for order and pointing me to the one who will walk with me through disorder. This friend of mine brings to life the following scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” I think that is the devastating power of disorder and tragedy. They can make us feel like this moment is far from momentary and instead, leave us certain it is going to last forever. Tragedy and disorder keep us so focused on the moment at hand, fighting with all of our might to regain some sense of control and peace, that we lose sight of the unseen. The hopelessness we find in trying to control the seen is what often blinds us most to the hope found in that unseen higher power. I think we all have some area in our life that is calling us to take that first step today. Maybe it's not alcohol, but some other area of life that's become unmanageable. And maybe today - Monday - the start of a new week - would be the perfect day to just take that first step and say "I am powerless over........" It's been my personal experience that is where we begin exploring and discovering the depths of our own spirituality. In many ways, my running community has helped me understand this side of God's nature. I've never met a group of people so committed to celebrating the attempt, regardless of what the outcome of that attempt might end up being.
My running journey is full of events I attempted but didn't finish, or did finish but in an ugly manner. Yet, I have a circle of friends who are always more anxious about asking what's next than they are about talking about the attempts that didn't go so well. Because of them, I too spend a lot of time thinking about what's next - and tackling what's next. I believe that's the influence God wants to have in our life. He wants us looking around this world, seeing the next opportunity to make a loving impact, and he doesn't want us weighed down for a minute by things in our life that have gone wrong. Can't you just see God sitting across from us, like a running buddy, eyes wide open and his heart racing, asking, "what's next?" There's a beautify story in the bible. Jesus had just risen from the dead. He has a private conversation with Peter, who had denied knowing Jesus 3 times before Jesus was crucified, even though Peter swore up and down that would NEVER happen. In this conversation, Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him. And three times Peter told Jesus he did - I love you - more than anything Peter told him. You know, I think this was Jesus' way of telling Peter, I'm not bookmarking the three times you denied me. I'm celebrating what you are going to attempt from this moment on. Jesus told Peter he'd be the rock upon which he'd build his church - I think Jesus was way more focused on what Peter would try than who Peter denied. Bob Goff says some beautiful words about what this looks like in our life. He said, "redemption is a process set in motion by love and completed by grace." Redemption, love and grace..... Some days, if we're looking in the wrong places, it can feel like there isn't much of that process left in the world. It can feel like the whole world is standing around with a whole fist full of bookmarks ready to glue one to each page full of the failures we collect. And I think while we're watching this and sensing them getting slapped against our pages and we're doing everything we can to protect ourselves from them, we're missing out on a loving God who doesn't have the first stinking bookmark in his hands. We're missing out on a God too excited to ask, "what's next" to even consider bookmarking an attempt in life that failed. God's locker room speech to us is much like the one he gave Peter. Do you love me, he's asking us in response to each of our shortcomings? And with each yes we give him he's responding, awesome, now go be a rock on which I can build my church. Go attempt something!! When I first read that passage yesterday, I thought to myself, well surely God wants us reflecting on him.
Then I read it again. I think we all have a person in our lives - maybe several - that even when we aren't thinking about them, even when some obvious expression of them isn't right in front of us, even then we somehow can see and feel their presence. I think that's what Father Keating is suggesting here should be the starting point of how we see and feel God. He's suggesting that at the dinner table, when we say a blessing over the food, God doesn't disappear when the final words of the prayer are complete. God pulls up a chair and eats with us. He's in the conversations and in the food. I think he's suggesting that when I sit here this morning reading, and then reflecting and writing, and when I get up from here and go run, that if I have mature faith I'll see God grab his running shoes and go with me. He'll ask, how far are we going today? Then he'll say, oh yea, I forgot, we're running across Tennessee. I think the suggestion here is that mature faith doesn't have to call a timeout in the middle of the day to remember God - mature faith never experiences his absence. Mature faith doesn't look at a calendar and see my work stuff and my play stuff and my personal stuff and my fitness stuff - it just sees God. Mature faith doesn't see God as an extra thing to do, but sees everything else as impossible to do without him. After thinking about mature faith this morning, my prayer comes from Psalm 86:11 Teach me your way, Lord,that I may rely on your faithfulness;give me an undivided heart,that I may fear your name. The Hebrew word used for fear here - yirah - is tied to reverence and awe. And so this prayer, wouldn't that be the most beautiful of mature faiths? To rely on God.To have an undivided heart.To be awed and overcome with reverence every time we simply open our eyes. I confess - I do not have a mature faith. But this morning I am praying - Lord teach me your ways.... When I was a kid, my parents built a house. Well, they didn't build it, they actually had a bunch of Amish men build it. I remember watching that house go up smack dab in the middle of a huge open square of endless and ugly brown dirt. I was only about 7 or 8 I suppose at the time, but I remember that scene so well.
Maybe because once that house was finished, I spent a summer in the Midwest heat and humidity picking up rocks in that dirt, preparing it for my dad to plant grass seed. Years later, when I was old enough to ride the mower and mow that grass, I'd always stand back and admire how nice that freshly mowed yard looked. And I'd always remember those rocks. Even today, I find great joy in mowing my own yard. When I'm done I often find myself standing out in the street and just looking at it. Even though I'm standing hundreds of miles, a few states and about 50 years away from those rocks of my childhood - I often remember them fondly standing alone in that street. Lately I've been running by a few new houses being built in our area. One day I'll run by them and see brown dirt, and the next day there will be a beautiful yard there. And I wonder - what about the rocks? We want that in our lives some days, don't we? We want to skip the rocks and the seed planting and just stand in the street and admire our lives. We want to skip the toil and jump right to man, life is good. If you're like me, though, you've lived long enough to know that's not how life works. If you're like me, you've lived long enough to know the beauty we're often standing in the street admiring is impossible without the rocks. And if you're like me, you begin to wonder if when God is standing in the street admiring me, he's looking at my rocks with a smile, totally unaware that I have this beautiful yard. We are all picking up rocks these days. Employment struggles. Relationship struggles. What do I do with my kids this school year struggles. Health struggles - yours or someone your worried about. We see the rocks on the news. Some days there are even rocks we are tossing at one another. Dear God almighty, it's in your power, just go ahead and lay some sod already!! I love what Bob Goff says this morning in his devotional: "Our lives can feel like a desert sometimes, like nothing's coming easy and we're just parched and dried up. We scramble for ways to look like we're the finished product, so we start improvising ways to look like we have things figured out. We throw a fresh coat of paint over our rusted and busted frames, roll out the fake turf, and hope nobody notices the difference." I know you're scrambling today. But stop for a minute. Oh, the rocks are heavy and dirty and it's hot out and the last thing you want to be doing is toting around those dreaded rocks. But one day, those rocks are going to be the beauty in something. One day you're going to be standing in the street of your life and admiring something rather ordinary as if it's the most beautiful image you've ever seen. Only, it won't be that image you're drawn to - it will be your memory of those rocks. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
CategoriesAll Faith Fatherhood Life Mental Health Perserverance Running |