As I read through the first part of Psalms 27, I am struck by the question the psalmist asks. If the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear? If the Lord is light, then surely I cannot fear the dark. If the Lord is my salvation, then surely I cannot fear the pits of hell, or that which is produced by it. As we dive into this new series on assurance and confidence in the face of fear and destruction, I want us to think about the things which make us afraid because, if I’m honest, these passages feel nice, like something I would embroider on a hand towel or superimpose on a poster in my living room. I can believe that the Lord is light so long as I don’t dwell too long on the scary things in the dark that I am afraid of. What I don’t want us to do is build up a false confidence, an assurance that is forged through apathy and ignorance. So, before you read these passages again, I want you to really think about whom it is you fear. What is it that you are afraid of?
Consequently, who are the enemies in your life that God promises you will be felled? What war is rising up against you that will not touch you, despite how close it will get?
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Often, when we think of fear, we think of our biggest fears, our phobias. We think about the quickening of our heartbeat when we see a spider, the tightness in our chest when we look down from a great height. We think about the drop of our stomach when the number of your child’s school flashes across the screen of your phone. These are big and worthy fears.
I want us to also think about our small fears, though. I want us to think about our pervasive fears. Our fears born of habit and monotony. The fears we whisper to ourselves in our own throats and our own minds.
Personally, I’m not sure I can remember the last lasting time I wasn’t afraid. Just prior to sitting down to write the first draft of this I had read and prayed through the daily Common Prayer liturgy. Part of our daily reading was to finish Genesis 8, a chapter we had been in. I was struck by how it ended. Noah, his family, and a host of animals, have been riding in an ark across the flooded earth (it doesn’t matter in this space if you regard this story as historical history or cultural history). The Lord makes a promise in verses 21 and 22:
“The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in (Their) heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
‘As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.'”
Genesis 8:21-22 NIV
I would feel better about these verses in the midst of my fear if I looked around the world and saw things to fear that God was afflicting on the world. But I don’t. As I take inventory of the things I am afraid of in this moment, it is not things of God at all but things that people have done to the world and to each other. At the heart of most of my fears, I think, is a fear of others.
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I am afraid of a world that is ending, crumbling under the weight of residents who do not care what they do. I am afraid of guns which are carried by people who can hate as fiercely as they can love. I am afraid of a virus in the lungs of my neighbor.
I am also afraid of the loss of people, that when my roommate moves away in a few short months, nothing will be the same. I am afraid that my college friends will one day grow roots and they won’t need each other anymore and we will no longer be friends. I am afraid of what social media guru, musician, and TikTok influencer Lacy Abercrombie called “the greatest of the Enemy’s lies” in a recent video on addition: if someone knew me, really knew me, they would have no choice but to flee in revulsion.
And when I am really truly honest, which I do try to be in this space, I am afraid also of myself. I am fearful of my skin and what it can do to someone, scared of making the world less habitable than more. I am scared of my own apathy which festers more often than courage. It is perhaps apathy I fear the most. Apathy does nothing, is nothing, but it is easy. If two people walk over a pit of snakes, we may be tempted to call them brave (or perhaps reckless or stupid) but if one does not care if they live or die, does not care about the dangers of snakes, this is not really assured confidence despite the outward outcomes looking the same.
This week, spend some time getting uncomfortable. What scares you? Who scares you? What do you need trampled? And then ask yourself if a God who is unending light and salvation can step between you and the things you fear.
The year 2021 ended about how she began – grim and tragic with the loss of the iconic Betty White. It’s important to note, though, that there was good too, which so often gets swept up underneath the endless current of loss. Racial justice was delivered in key court cases, vaccines were deployed across the world, and people reconnected with their families, friends, and the tiny and big worlds around them.
As we settle in to a new variant and the increasing effects of climate change, we must also remember the good: the people we love and who, miraculously, love us; the days we fill; the nights we pass with closed eyes and open dreams. Wherever 2022 takes you, know you are loved. Without further pleasantries, here are the five best books I read this year (and if you need even more, check out my 10 best books of the decade):
#5: The Girl Without Skin by Mads Peder Nordbo
Nordbo delivers Nordic murder at its finest. In front of an empty, arctic landscape, a Viking is unearthed next to the flayed body of a Greenland police officer. Full of removed organs, deep character development, and a conspiracy theory that bends and almost breaks, The Girl Without Skin will spark your next murder-mystery obsession. Journalist Matthew Cave and his not quite sidekick convicted murderer Tupaarnaq prove compelling characters to follow into the icy abyss.
P.S. the sequel, Cold Fear, is equally incredible.
#4: Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind by Kermit Pattison
The most basal question of who we are is where did we come from? Pattison’s hefty exploration seeks to not only answer that question but also to understand who the men are behind the iconic skeletons like Lucy and Ardi. At a time when science sentiment has never been so hostile, and science literacy has never been so sparse, Pattison reminds us that all true things start with complicated people, nestled within their contexts of fierce global politics, NSF funding, and the ego of self and country. A gripping book of non-fiction, Pattison delivers an intriguing and accurate description of humankind’s genesis and an unflinching portrayal of the messy men who unearth it.
#3: Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
Sometimes people make mistakes, sometimes people fall in love. Mostly, people are just really anxious. Set on a bridge, in a hostage room, and inside a therapist’s office, nothing is quite as it seems in this conceptually simple, pragmatically complex book about anxious people in a terrible situation (by which I mean life). Backman retains his place as one of the world’s most compelling authors in his latest attempt. Plus, when you finish the book you can catch the Netflix adaption out just a few days ago.
#2: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
You’ve most likely read this already but if you, like me, get a little nervous about universally loved books, exit out of this post and add this to your cart immediately. If you’ve already read this, but haven’t read by #2 pick from last year, The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, it’s time to pick that one up. In Miller’s most iconic work to date, the demi-God Achilles finds a breathtaking and heartbreaking path with his other half, the awkward prince Patroclus. Told in achingly poignant detail, the two warriors battle for control of the ancient world, and the fates that control them. This novel will leave you soaring and sobbing.
#1: Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
It’s a bit shocking to me I only read this book this year considering how many times I’ve recommended it to others. In fact, when a dear colleague unexpectedly resigned earlier this year, this book was the only gift I could think of suitable to thank her. McConaghy’s international debut blends suspense, literary fiction, cli-fi, and feminist manifesto into a novel that erratically approaches the end of the world. Franny Stone is dangerous. Franny Stone is collected. Franny Stone is trying to document the last migration of the Arctic terns amidst a dying world and a hostile academy. This book broke me open to the marrow – and carefully reminded me that it is sometimes the most broken parts of ourselves that shine the most beautifully. A triumph plain and true.
Editor’s Note: Every year, Bryce chooses a song toexplore what the Christmas season can and should mean to us this year. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from all of us at Team BVV!
Each Christmas season, several things are assured: A minimum of one present will not arrive on time, a Christmas feast will be had, and Mark Lowry’s Mary, Did You Know? will be scrutinized on every corner of the internet. The argument against the Christmas classic can be summarized as this: Of course Mary knew! She was told in Luke 1 that she would be with child despite her virginity, that that child would be called Jesus, that he would be in the lineage of David, and that he would be God’s son, appointed to oversee the world. Of course Mary knew.
Thirty some years and twenty-one chapters later, a man sits at a table with his best friends. It should be a feast but there’s a clear tension in the air. The leader of the pack is being hunted in backrooms by the government. The man’s name is Peter and he suckles on the tautness in the air like oxygen. No matter what happens, he will be with his friend, his brother, even if it means his own death. The hunted man, Jesus, looks into his eyes and tells him no, he will do no such thing. It isn’t a noble decree, some Hollywood script to manipulate your heartstrings into silent contemplations on ethical sacrifice and the limits of brotherhood; it is a prophesy: Peter will not just refuse to die for his friend, he will deny to know him not once, not twice, but thrice. The spoken word becomes flesh. Peter denies knowing the friend he swore he could die for.
Knowledge is insufficient.
One chapter after an angel visits her, giving her the guidebook to being the Son of God’s mother, Mary walks a day into the desert before realizing Jesus is not with her – the original Home Alone moment. She is angry when she finds him like any mother would be. Our anger is often repurposed grief, recycled fear. He responds to her worried question of where were you with where did you think I was? I’ve been in my Father’s house. Pay attention to verse fifty – they did not understand what he meant by that. Mary knew that Jesus was the Son of God but, twelve years later, lacked the understanding of what that would mean, how consequential his existence would be. Twenty-one years later, she would watch her boy suck in his last breath nailed to a wooden slab, blood dripping down his naked chest as every citizen gathered around cheering his demise, cursing his existence.
Knowledge is insufficient.
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I don’t think we have to look far in our own lives to feel how deeply insufficient knowledge is. The best parallel is of course to those who are parents. You have nine-ish months of knowledge. Nine-ish months of tangible evidence of a growing human being expanding your flesh or the flesh of your partner. How did that knowledge compare to the first moment their skin touched yours? How did that experience compare to every parent before you who told you that nothing in your life would rival the love you felt in that moment? Did knowing prepare you? Did knowing enlighten you? Or did the knowledge come up woefully short of what it felt like in your own flesh and bone in that moment?
I’m not a parent so I conceptually get the above paragraph, but I need a better moment to sink my teeth into. I’m picturing Diego from the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy (use whoever you wish) time-traveling to me in January 2020 and saying “Hey, man, there’s gonna be a huge global pandemic over the next couple of years and it’s going to really impact your life.” Even with that foretelling, I’m not sure I would understand.
I don’t think I would understand what those first few months of fear would look and feel like, when I slipped on gloves and a mask and stood outside my grandmother’s garage with her trying to fix her phone so she could stay in contact with us, knowing I was putting her at risk by not being there and letting her lifeline to the outside world not work, and also by being there. That I could literally kill her by standing next to her. No amount of knowledge could prepare me for what that would feel like.
Knowledge is insufficient.
The beauty of the coming Christ is that he comes not as a sibling to Caesar Augustus, poised from privilege to overthrow, but as a baby born to starving parents lying in a filthy, feces-stained manger. Then, he comes as an infant fleeing with his parents to a different country as politically exiled immigrants. Then, he comes as a prophet who spends more time with whores than pastors and finally the savior of the world comes as a criminal sentenced to death row for inhabiting his own flesh and saying his own name. To know that is a great first step but it is not enough.
We, like those in the internet echo chambers debating the extent of Mary and the angel, can convince ourselves that hearing a fact is the same thing as embodying knowledge. That to know something excuses us from the experience of living it. This Christmas, as we head into a third year of the pandemic, grapple with climate change, stare the injustices of Christian Nationalism in the face, it is not enough to read the Christmas story, to hum the hymns with our arms raised, to pass the cup and light the candle. The knowledge of the angels and the virgin and the crucified can live among us all they want but until we embody the knowledge, seek for the mourners among the cheerers on Calvary, flip the tables in our temples, seek out the meek and the powerless, the knowledge of Christmas is insufficient.
Emmanuel has come and hallelujah for that. But now that I know that, what’s next? And what mysteries of God might I be ignoring by writing the living God off as someone I already know?
Background photo from Tyler Callahan. Series header designed in Canva.
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth part of a four-part series on suffering. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three. Click here for a playlist full of songs from this series and inspired by the messages.
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It’s a wild world, we’re all trying to find our place in it.
It’s a wild world and no one seems to understand it.
It’s a wild world but there ain’t no way I’m gonna quit it.
As our series and Ecclesiastes winds down, I have the ninth chapter playing in my head. “So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no one knows whether love or hate awaits them. All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.” (9:1-2b) We spoke of this during week 1. Life is meaningless and it ends in death. We do good and we do evil. Good is done to us and evil is done to us. What is the point?
I have a chronic, perhaps terminal disease: depression. It is part of what lends me to speak often about lament; my brain is better at processing sorrow than joy. I think often of death, what it might mean to finally be done with the river of time. If you missed my Easter message from this past spring, I’d encourage to read it and then come back. The notion of heaven is wonderful because it provides us with some sense of relief, an opportunity to sit without our anger and division, to simply be under a tin roof as the rain falls and covers us like a hug in the sound of peace. There is some joy in what the author tells us in verse 6 “Never again will (the dead) have a part in anything that happens under the sun.” We will no longer have to toil under the sun or wear masks or bury our loved ones. Yet, in the context of the chapter, the author is not joyous as I am reading it; he is sad.
The full context of that verse is this: “Anyone who is among the living has hope – even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.” Perhaps, then, there is still something worthwhile about the human experience. Our joy molds the meaning of our suffering and our suffering gives us context by which to judge our joy as good. Perhaps our names label more than our bodies but give voice to our experiences. We toil so that we may rest. Sometimes we ebb. Sometimes we flow.
We spoke of this during week 2: life is a river that we just have to jump into. As much as we try to mold our experience, our plans turn to dust. Indeed we know what is written in verse 11 is true: “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” Life shapes our context; we do not shape our lives. Life happens and our task is to make the meaningless life meaningful. “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your (spouse), whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun – all your meaningless days.” (9:7-10).
One way in which we make meaning out of our meaningless days is through our walk with people. We spoke of this during week 3. We are to suffer together as one body, to root out the nature of suffering rather than our enemies in each other. As we learn to see the face of God in every person we encounter, we find people to bring to our tables to feast beside and get drunk with. Our lives are ash sifting through an hourglass. Let’s enjoy it by enduring it as long as we can.
The war has already been won; our bodies are destined for relaxation under a tin roof. Yet here we are for now. I will raise my cup to drink with you, pick up my knife only to give you bread. I will try to fight for liberation for the best of us and I will try to fight for liberation for the bitter worst. I will suffer under the toil of my labor and I will stretch out under the joy of my harvest. Better days are behind and ahead of me. Better days are all around me.
Thank you for being stuck in this meaningless river at the same time as me.
Background photo from Tyler Callahan. Series header designed in Canva.
Editor’s Note: This is the third part of a four-part series on suffering. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Come back next next Wednesday for part four.
I write this next entry in our series with a bit of trepidation. Yet, as Mike Donehey writes, “It’s gonna take myself to cultivate the kind of life that others haven’t seen yet.” If you were to ask me if I want suffering, I would tell you no with honesty. I would tell it to you emphatically. I would tell you no because it is true: I do not long for suffering for anyone. And yet I have found myself living a life incongruent with that ideal as I look back at the sum of it. I do not long for suffering and yet I accept and advocate for suffering when it is deserved and when it is minimal compared to something else. I have witnessed this throughout the pandemic and testified to it in the first week of this series and in conversations with friends and mentors over the past few months.
I am struggling to grieve for the obstinate that have died from COVID-19. I was reminded again of the depths of the injustice of mourning when a friend texted me that her critically ill uncle couldn’t get a needed ICU bed because unvaccinated COVID patients had filled the ward. How deep is that pain and how righteous is that anger. And yet, I was convicted by theologian Mason Mennenga’s retweet of a Fox News headline detailing Jimmy Kimmel’s call for the unvaccinated to give up their ICU beds in which Mennenga wrote “The thing about being a universalist is I want liberation for even the worst people in the world.”
I do not identify as a universalist, but the call he mentions moves as though I do. By far the hardest thing about being a Christian is that we are bound to the offensiveness of grace; it is deeply inescapable on both ends. We can neither outrun the limits of grace nor can we pull the cover of grace out from our fiercest enemies. Perhaps you find yourself at another point on the political spectrum that makes my confession about the unvaccinated sting. Perhaps it reinforces everything you’ve thought about the cruelty of people who look or think like me. I can’t blame you and I’m sorry for the harm I’ve caused and the harm I will inevitably continue to. A less controversial example involves something I’ve written about on this blog before. I was friends with someone in childhood who eventually went on to commit a school shooting that affected many of my adult friends. He is in prison now where he suffers and where he will continue to suffer for over a thousand years as dictated by his sentence. My inclination is that this suffering feels justified to you, just as many argued in the replies to Mennenga’s liberation tweet. Consequential suffering like prison just doesn’t sting the heart like the random suffering of an earthquake. I think if most of us are honest with ourselves, in our quiet, faceless parts, we might find we’re perfectly acceptable with some suffering. Perhaps earned suffering isn’t really suffering.
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When I look into the face of my enemy
I see my brother, I see my brother.
When I look into the face of my enemy
I see my sister, I see my father, I see my mother.
I think often of Christ’s words on the cross in Luke 23:34 and the response Noah Gundersen spits back in his song Jesus, Jesus: “And I know you said, ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do’ but sometimes I think they do and I think about you.” When we are given grace, it feels like the loosening of bondage. When others are given grace, it feels like a slap in the face. It feels like a boot on your chest. This is what I mean by the offensiveness of grace. Grace is painful.
Here, on the cross, intentional, unrighteous violence against the God incarnate is still met with forgiveness. Even as they nailed his hands and beat him and watched, laughing in mockery, Jesus claims their ignorance. When it’s abundantly clear they know what they’re doing, the Christ asks his creator to forgive them.
What of consequence do I know? What do I mean when I say they had it coming, that they deserved the suffering they are reaping? Why does my mouth form those words in spite of all the grace I have received?
These questions lead to that same, all too familiar pit. In Ecclesiastes 4, the author is writing about oppression when he goes on to say: “And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.” (4:2-3) In my suffering, I feel the truth of these verses. In our cultural and contemporary moment, in this seemingly endless sludge of tragedy, I feel these verses. I cry out a little like Job that I wish I had never been born.
Yet, they also resonate when I think about the suffering it often feels I’m forced to endorse. The nature of our society in its current systems mandates suffering. Endorsing consequence requires endorsing suffering. Our binary political systems mandates suffering. Our allegiances mandate suffering . Is it possible to imagine a society in which prisoners are given liberation? Is it possible to imagine a healthcare system that sustains itself on wellness? Is it possible for us to be a people who can stop asking how much suffering is acceptable and start believing in the absolution of all suffering? Is systemic change overwhelming? Perhaps those who are never born are truly blessed because they never receive or endorse suffering. They escape the false dichotomy of pain. Yet, we are alive. How should we live in this suffering life we have found ourselves in?
The author goes on to write “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: if either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” (4:9-12). This text parallels the Epic of Gilgamesh, a prevalent story at the time. Gilgamesh encourages Enkidu about the value of friendship and the author of Ecclesiastes extolls us of the same, both using the example of a three-strand rope and the power of two over one. How revolutionary might it be for us to suffer together, to decide that the cause of the suffering does not matter, that the target is unimportant. How revolutionary might it be for us to make suffering, instead of each other, our enemy.
This, then, is perhaps our focus. We cannot change the world, break systems, redefine justice in our courts, on wall street, and everywhere else that injustice flows like a river. And yet we are not powerless. Augustine of Hippo wrote, “‘The times are bad! The times are troublesome!’ This is what humans say. But we are our times. Let us live well and our times will be good. Such as we are, such are our times.” You cannot break systems but you can break yourself: who do you need to free from justice so that they may have mercy? My answer is long but here is where I am starting: on my knees praying for the healing of someone I know in a hospital bed, unvaccinated, suffering a consequence. No, that’s a lie. Here is where I’m starting: on my knees praying for the healing of someone I know in a hospital bed, unvaccinated, suffering.
May our pride be broken into mourning. May we have the courage to walk alongside every living thing in their moment of pain, no matter how deserved it was. May we be the gift of grace we have received.
Étienne Loulié was born in 1654 in Paris, the son of a sword-finisher. He would go on to live a life filled with music, one of the few of his era who wrestled with the theoretical underpinnings of music alongside practicing and performing it. In 1696, Étienne used Galileo Galilei’s pendulum to produce the first metronome but, unlike the ones of today, the invention made no sound. Instead, a musician used the metronome like they used a conductor – visually watching the pendulum to stay on time. It would take almost two hundred years to produce what we think of today as the metronome, developed in Amsterdam by Dietrich Nikollaus Winkel in 1814 before the idea was repackaged with a scale and sold by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel two years later. Ever since, musicians around the world have utilized metronomes to develop their own sense of timing and remain on tempo, much as large orchestras do with conductors. But the tool is not without its controversy. Many musicians and musical scholars value the metronome for its mathematical perfection, restraining the human tendency to speed up or slow down over time and as a consequence of passion. Others are troubled by the perfection of the metronome. Music, in their view, should be felt instead of perfected. Delivering music across aesthetics and cultures involves more than timing; it requires swings, grooves, and creativity. Life, according to Ecclesiastes, also involves timing. And like the metronome proponents and critics, understanding time’s relentless rigidity and creative swings may help us navigate our seasons of suffering.
I have had a lifelong obsession with the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. It begins this way “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.” The text goes on to list a time for each thing and its opposite: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to shut up and a time to speak. Life is not something we produce inasmuch as it is something that occurs to us. The choices we make, the works we produce, are like a metronome, giving structure to the music that plays without ceasing around us, the river of time that flows from death to birth to death. We learned last week that life is meaningless, that sometimes it is better to endure our joy and our suffering rather than to question it. This week, we are learning that perhaps all seasons are endured without reason. That time moves as we makes sense of it; our sense of it does not make time move.
I mentioned last week that I have been hearing a call to live more into today than worry about what is coming tomorrow. I am also learning to avoid the temptation of yesterday. I have restarted the practice of praying occasionally with prayer beads. The serenity prayer that accompanies the Anglican beads prays the last cruciform beads with this excerpt: “Let me live one day at a time and enjoy one moment at a time.” This is a countercultural notion of living life. Everything in our Western life requires and revolves around a plan. You may be familiar with the interview question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” From a young age, we are taught to set goals and see our lives on a path that we help lay the foundation of. You go to school so that you can do well and pass to the next grade. For most of us, those grades eventually led to another building, full of new people: the transition from elementary to middle school or middle to high school. When we graduated high school or left early, we were faced with choices. Do we continue on an educational path, electing to go to college or trade school? Do we raise a family? Do we enter the workforce? Where do we eventually want to end up? What do we see ourselves doing when we’re grown up? Whatever path we choose comes with new paths. How will we parent our children? What products will we use to clean our home? What promotions are on the table? What ladder do I want to climb and how far do I want to ascend? What classes should I take and how should I integrate this knowledge and these skills into my post-educational life?
Everything is on a path and, if you’ve lived long enough, you’ll know that those plans, like our bodies, can crumble to dust far quicker than it takes to make them. Our children respond differently to our chosen parenting practices than we had anticipated. The economy tanks and we get laid off. We choose a major, graduate with a degree, and realize we find so much more joy in a completely different field. We have no control over the river of time yet we plan as though we do.
A few verses after the lists in chapter 3, we receive this word: “(God) has made everything beautiful in its time. (They have) also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (3:11). I think some of our suffering results from this incongruence. We find ourselves out of time, struggling to be creative against the rigidity of the river. We find ourselves too creative, struggling to be rigid against the creative whims of the river. We know that there is victory in the end and yet we find ourselves living through the middle. We want to live each day as it comes and yet we know that our culture requires us to have a plan. We look anxiously each day toward the Coming of the Kingdom; We want to enjoy the bread we eat today.
The weight of time is this: that God is the one with hands on the clocks, deciding when we start and when we stop, that we are the ones whose feet are on the ground. Again, I am left with this query: what if we live our life? What if we exercise neither creativity nor rigidity? How might our lives look if we slouch into the river? I’m not sure what this will look like for you but I encourage you to dig into the slouchiness of it. What regrets from your past might God be calling you to let go of? What dreams of the future are keeping you from enjoying the moment? What joys from the past are you reliving that is preventing you from seeking joy today? What worries about the future are stealing your sleep?
The truth is this: what has happened has happened. What will be will come. Everything is meaningless. We are incapable of knowing the reality of tomorrow, incapable of changing what has passed. When we begin to craft our lives around the seasons we are in, I believe we may be equipped to endure our suffering in its time and endure our joy in its.
It takes very little these days to feel the sorrow dripping from the world like sap; it sticks to everything. I’ll admit I’ve been a little disconnected these past two years, floating more than walking through life, surviving more than living. Perhaps you can relate. I started grad school last fall in the middle of a worldwide lockdown. I started my second year as a war came to an end and a different one took its place, as an Earthquake killed thousands, as ICU beds filled to capacity yet again. It’s been a little too much if I’m honest. I’m still struggling to find words to name the experiences, still wondering whether the words matter at all. Yet, I’ve felt myself chewing on a few words these past few weeks as I watch the world end again, feeling a little like the Pharaoh in the year of the plagues, wondering in my pride when it will all just stop, wondering when we might get a morsel of relief. Over the next four weeks, we’ll wrestle our way through portions of Ecclesiastes, in search of meaning for the suffering embedded so deeply into our skin and screamed so loudly in the world around us.
I want to start with a question exemplified through a story of my own small suffering. I know that in a world of existential, collective trauma the broken heart of one man is a little selfish to focus on. My hope in bringing it up, though, is two-fold. Perhaps you will be encouraged to claim and name the personal tragedy that has afflicted you even in spite of the need to honor and acknowledge the much bigger grief around us. Even if it doesn’t matter to most, what matters to one still matters. Secondly, I want to disentangle us from the political nature of global suffering, the weaponry that suffering arms us with against presidents and kings, even against our better judgment. We’ll unpack that more in week three. I want to disentangle us from the political nature as much as possible because I’m utilizing my story and my story is built on my body and my body is politicized and debated.
I had discovered that the guy I was seeing was cheating on me, a betrayal that felt devastating to me because a few days prior I had confided in him a great vulnerability that exposed an insecurity I had brought into our relationship. I had wanted to work on it to be a better partner for him. I felt stupid for wanting to invest even more into something he had already, at least partially, let go of. I was wanting to fix something about myself and now I had evidence that so much more of me was broken than I had originally thought. Something about me was not enough for him and the essence of who I was and what value I brought to his life was not worth the truth. When I confronted him, he denied it. Worse, he explained it away, made me feel bad for thinking that I knew what I knew. So, I stayed and doubled my pain when 17 days later I walked out of his house into a snowstorm after he stopped even trying to hide his various affairs.
I felt the weight of it for months. I felt the weight of loving someone I didn’t know, of loving someone who didn’t love me. I felt the weight of not being enough, of being so tangibly unworthy of love and of truth. I felt the weight of doubt. And I felt the weight of the timeless question I had asked multiple times before, the weight of the question I still ask, the weight of the question I have no doubt I will ask until the day I head Home.
This experience was the perfect example of this question because, as I suffered, he did not. As I questioned if I could be loved, he was in a new loving relationship. The childhood adage “cheaters never prosper” sits uncomfortably next to the nature of reality. Cheaters always prosper. The situation is fully in their control and when the relationship ends, they already have their next relationship lined up.
The question, of course, is why is this bad thing happening? And why is it happening to me?
Why do bad things happen? Why do bad things happen to me and the people I love? This problem has plagued scholars and theologians for centuries if not millennia. I’ve had a lifelong fascination with lament, a theme you’ll have no doubt noticed if you’ve read any of my prior work, so these questions have been foundational to who I am. They are worthwhile questions, deep and meaningful ones. But they have become less meaningful to me recently because the weight of the bad is over and beyond what the weight of the good has been recently. Although, there is still good.
I was on a zoom call with five of my friends the other week. It was the first time all six of us had been together in some time, each of us scattered around the country. I found my mind blissfully empty. I had no questions. I was only there in the moment, full and drunk on the laughter. We were trading stories about our lives recently, trips back home to visit family, big milestones like births and engagements. We were trading questions and shock at revelations from parents and siblings.
Not once on that call did I ask myself why there was a good thing happening to me. It isn’t as though I’ve never questioned the presence of goodness. In fact, a few days after our zoom call, I was texting with a friend about a mutual friend who had posted a picture of him and his boyfriend. It was a little difficult to see him smiling because this friend had caused us each a lot of pain in the relationships he had had with us. We both remarked that we hoped he was a healthier person, that he had grown and begun to make better choices for the sake of his boyfriend. And yet, I texted her “But idk it’s also kind of hard to think about him being happy I guess.”
I have, then, felt very comfortable questioning goodness and joy, just never when I was the recipient. I wonder if I were honest with myself, if I would discover that the problem of good is as compelling as the problem of evil. I wonder if the question of why something good has happened to me is just as elusive as the question of why something bad has happened.
Ecclesiastes is sometimes read among Jews during the Feast of Sukkoth, a feast that takes place in the fall in remembrance of the exiled years on their way to the Promised Land. The feast is joyous in spite of the pain, a reminder of God’s provisions. Many Jews celebrate by building huts in their backyard or sleeping underneath the stars, exposing themselves to the elements and exist solely underneath the provision and presence of God. As Chief Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks remarked at the feast following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, “We call Sukkot our festival of joy, because sitting there in the cold and the wind, we remember that above us and around us are the sheltering arms of the divine presence. If I were to summarize the message of Sukkot I’d say it’s a tutorial in how to live with insecurity and still celebrate life.”
I wonder if we are to endure suffering the same way we are to endure joy – with experience over interrogation. Lately, I’ve been feeling the call to simply live in the day I woke up in, to worry a little bit less about tomorrow, to be a little less excited about it. In the middle of a climate crisis and a global pandemic, I am more than aware that tomorrow is only a dream, only a hope. The future is not tangible; it may not even exist. The point of Ecclesiastes is that life is futile. We are told that work is meaningless, that everything we accumulate will fall away. We are even told that we will fade away: “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.” (3:20). In the very beginning we are told this plainly: “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.'” (1:2).
When I read that in preparation for this series, it felt a bit like balm on the wound. The questions I ask are meaningful to me because, as I mentioned, lament is an important spiritual practice for me. But I’m beginning to wonder if the answer would change anything for me. If I found out why my life has been one of repeated suffering, endless trauma, would it matter? If I discovered why just sitting in the presence of my friends meant so much, would I appreciate it more? Would I discover I didn’t deserve it? Would I be stuck in the same life, only now I would have heavy answers instead of questions?
A few chapters later we are told: “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other.” (7:14a). Moving forward through the endless suckage, the darkest, forlorn night, I’m still going to ask questions because, as Semler wrote, “I’m giving this my all,” but I am going to be mindful of the questions I am asking. That if I am going to ask “why suffering?” I need to also ask “Why joy?” Next week, we are going to talk more about what it might mean to live in life rather than to live life. But for now, I want us to think about the questions we are asking, and to question whether asking them is helpful. Maybe we’re in a season of exploration and we need to be asking. Or, maybe we’re in a season we need to simply experience because the answers, whatever they could possibly be, wouldn’t make a lick of difference to our wounds which just simply hurt.
As you doomscroll through your phone, it’s tempting, likely even, to believe that the world as we know it is coming to an end. The world refugee population is growing exponentially, bounty hunts are underway in Texas, streets are flooding, the earth is shaking, and a virus continues to ravage the world’s population. Those in power horde vaccines, write think pieces on the ownership of bodies they’ve never piloted, and shove their hands deep into their pockets sadly musing aloud that nothing can be done. This may be the end times or these may simply be dark times but either way, here’s some reading recommendations for when you’re able to put your phone and your posters down and find some relief.
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If you’re worried about climate change
You should read Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
The oceans have emptied of fish and the rest of the world’s wildlife is following quickly. Franny Stone, an exiled researcher incapable of staying still arrives in Greenland to follow Earth’s last Artic terns on their migration to Antarctica. As Franny journeys south, she must reckon with her past alongside humanity’s and ultimately answer: what is she willing to lose to find healing? McConaghy’s novel is everything at once: masterful suspense, critical literature, devastating cli-fi, feminist manifesto. Migrations is so evocative and freeing, we are left to wonder if it is still art or simply a reflection of our inner (and sometimes outer) lives, a piece of that devastating but realistic hope we carry with us.
If you’re upset about the recent Texas legislation
You should read Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
Abortion is illegal and five women in a small Oregon town wrestle with what that means for their lives. There’s Ro, who’s trying to get pregnant and writing a biography of a polar explorer, Eivør who is a polar explorer, Susan whose life is falling apart, pregnant teen Mattie, and Gin the mender who just might be a witch. Zumas’ book has often been compared to The Handmaid’s Tale which is equally fair and unfair. It’s a book about abortion as much as it a book about whales. It’s a story about justice and motherhood, how we fall in love and what happens when we find our family. Even as we feel hopeless we are reminded that blood is still in our veins and communities are built on the backs of individuals strung together.
If you’re consumed by the refugee crisis
You should read The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
Part memoir about fleeing the Vietnam war, part reflection on parenthood, Bui’s graphic memoir tells the story of her family’s escape from Vietnam in the 1970’s, her journey into motherhood, and the history of her people. Some distance from current contexts may be a good change of pace while still maintaining a grasp on the refugee crisis and how it feels to be displaced. To be home but not home.
If you’re frustrated with the government
You should read Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
Even in the midst of the world’s most reclusive and oppressive regime, there is also love. Demick’s landmark book tours North Korea in its most turbulent time through the eyes of six defectors, former ordinary North Koreans. Some are devout supporters of the regime during their time in the DPRK, others had been hostile, if submissive, to the regime. Two are secret lovers, one is a mother trying desperately to hold her family together, another is a doctor fighting between ethics and safety. Each has a unique vantage point and fight for survival. A remarkable achievement in every sense of the phrase, Demick’s non-fiction account will have you hooked. Completely accessible to the reader terrified of reading something true, Nothing to Envy‘s characters bleed with nuance and accountability, revealing that even the thing we are most sure about may not be entirely true.
If you’re wondering if the apocalypse will have snacks
You should read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Told in the days shortly before, and the years after, a pandemic wipes out most of earth’s inhabitants, Emily St. John Mandel primarily follows a theater caravan that wanders the wasteland performing Shakespeare for villages. As their world begins to change, we have to wonder if art can really save us all or if we’re doomed to become shells by the wastelands we inhabit. Partly post-apocalyptic fiction, but mostly a love letter to humanity and all that we produce, Station Eleven structures itself as a book you can read again and again, always finding something new to sink your teeth into.
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If you’re having a general unease about death
You should read From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
Caitlin Doughty, everyone’s favorite mortician, travels around the United States, and the world, in search of the good death. Majority culture America’s nervous avoidance of death and aging is an outlier to the rest of the world. Doughty’s travelogue documents death practices and perspectives from a variety of non-Western cultures, peeling back the fear and appreciating the beauty of the Great Beyond and what’s left of us when we leave. Artist Landis Blair offers striking illustrations and the people Doughty meets remind us we might just be okay, even if it doesn’t feel like we could be.
If you’re trying to care about the world but your personal life is in shambles and you don’t know what to do
You should read The Autumn Balloon by Kenny Porpora
Addiction has ravaged Porpora’s family. He knows this as he watches his mom write messages on balloons above Long Island. As she turns more and more to the bottle, the family loses their house and is forced into exile in the Arizona desert. Full of drug addicts and devastation, Porpora is finally able to escape into the walls of the academy. A mix of humor and sorrow, resilience and suffering, The Autumn Balloon is the book that has made me sob the loudest and feel the most whole.
If you’re trying to care about the world but you just can’t get out of bed
You should read The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Petersen
Written for young readers but dark enough for all of us, The Wingfeather Saga books follow The Igiby children – Janner, Tink, and Leeli – as darkness threatens to take over their homeland. The four-book saga follows the children on an adventure as they learn who they really are, what they are capable of, and how to save the world. Beautifully written with monsters that will terrify you, The Wingfeather Saga proves we are all children at heart and all capable of surviving that which tries to kill us.
The Fourth of July, the independence day for the United States, landing on a Sunday this year allows for a unique opportunity for American Christians to evaluate our own personal relationship between both the flag and the cross and make adjustments as necessary. An inescapable reality is that our identities as Christian and our identities as American exist in a complex tension that is critical for us to understand as both a body and as individuals. The founding of our country was a Christian missionary endeavor. The justification of everything that our founders did to the native and indigenous communities that were here before us was plastered with “Manifest Destiny,” quite literally the belief that genocide was not only inevitable but God-ordained. This is our inescapable legacy that we cannot change. The foundation of our religion in this country is built on unmarked graveyards.
This is not to say that the Fourth of July has no meaning whatsoever, or that Christians can’t or shouldn’t celebrate the holiday. A few weeks ago, I celebrated Midsummer, partly to honor my Norwegian heritage and partly to honor the liturgical celebration of John the Baptist’s birthday. The holiday has come to mean a great deal to me. The secular aspect encourages us to celebrate the passing of winter and the arrival of summer both literally and figuratively. The religious aspect encourages us to look forward to the coming Son and the promises of liberation he carries with him.
Photo of our Midsummer dining table
The Fourth of July can mean many things. It can be a rallying cry against all other countries and people that we are here and we are the best. It can be an honoring of what goes well and a reflection on what we need to change. It can be about family and friends, honoring and recognizing the communities we find ourselves embedded in. It can be an opportunity to engage in our culture, connecting our individual selves to a larger, meaningful collective. Like Midsummer, the Fourth of July has a lot to offer me. I spent this year’s holiday on a lake with three great friends and three new ones. We celebrated the beauty of each other and the beauty of the nature we found ourselves in.
Much like the manifest destiny of our forefathers, Christians today often fall into a dangerous pattern of putting patriotism and nationalism ahead of our work as Kingdom builders. The scriptures are clear that heaven is a place of multiple tongues and nations. They often speak about the universality of experience, while marking the distinction of difference. There are Jews and Gentiles but the differences between them, the ethnic rivalries and the seemingly incompatible ways of life, don’t matter anymore. All have been welcomed into everlasting relationship with the Holy.
This Fourth of July, as the fireworks fade from the sky and your stomach finishes digesting the hot dogs and hamburgers you scarfed down, I encourage you to evaluate your relationship with the cross and with your country. Are you giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s or have we shifted that relationship and given to Caesar what is God’s – our unflinching allegiance, worship, and praise? Have we begun to hear “America is good” and answered “all the time” in our liturgies? Have we hung the flag from our pulpits and endorsed political candidates and signed petitions in our parking lots? Have we done what was best for our country at the expense of a child of God in another country?
We cannot build a Kingdom when we’re fighting our citizens for territory. We cannot love mercy when we love retribution. We cannot seek justice when we sweep injustice under the rug. We will never walk humbly until we have traded the weight of our pride for accountability.
Photo by Adrian Cogua on Unsplash (Photo description: a hand holds a sign that says “Jesus is Alive”. The words are cut out so that the silhouette is on a wall.)
I sat in an Easter service last night and the pastor said “Whatever the world says about you, the cross says you’re loved.” Often, in Christian circles, we use the phrase “the world” when we mean “those outside of us.” I sat in my chair on the balcony, looking down at all the people in the room dressed in their casual clothes, their Sunday best, their jeans and their dresses and I thought about how the people at the feet of the cross have always hurt me more than they’ve healed me. That the world has often been the only voice telling me I was enough, while the Church shook its head in disgust. If we look at communities around the world, I think we’ll see this trend holds true. That the church is the body going into places and communities and preaching how worthless they are. That they’re too gay, too sexual, too Indigenous, too Black, too angry, too happy, too sad to belong here. That, yes, we are all sinners but at least we’re working on it and you’re not. That, yes, we are all images of God, you’re just an uglier and duller one.
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The principal miracle of Easter is that Jesus died and Jesus rose again and all of us get to live happily ever with him. But this miracle of Easter is not without its hard pill to swallow for those of us who do not feel safe around Christians. I spend a lifetime in sorrow from the hurt of Christians and my reward for surviving that is an eternity with them? That the people who took me to court to ensure they never had to serve me food will sit beside me at the feast. That the people who mocked my voice will join theirs with mine in refrains of Hallelujah. That the people who shamed me will drop their chains with mine.
I think about Jesus on the cross who cries out “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The people who called Jesus slurs, who whipped at his body, who killed him to maintain political power didn’t know what they were doing? That all seems very intentional to me. That pain feels personal. And then, one or ten or fifteen or sixty years later, those people died and have spent the first part of eternity looking at his Jewish, brown, kingly face. And it isn’t weird or painful or hard or sorrowful for any of them.
I think about the Marys who preached the first Easter message to men sitting in the same pew as pastors who spent their whole life thinking and saying that women couldn’t speak to them.
I think about Jesus’ great-great-great-great-great grandmother knitting cloth in heaven with all the other sex workers and the suburban mothers who called them whores.
This, too, is a miracle of Easter. That we spend our whole lives beating each other to death with our theological correctness, with our political truths, and our heresy-labels to gatekeep the Kingdom we ourselves are immigrants to just to discover we all end up together for eternity.
The miracle of the tin roof is that one day I will sit with other Christians and it will not be like hiding from lightning. It will be like sitting on a porch swing on a summer day, listening to the way the rain hits the roof. You can keep your mansions and the piles of gold and the health, and the dried eyes. I’ll just take one day sitting with my people and knowing down deep in my bones I can stay.
Living Beyond 