Moving

As I mentioned last time, this is a season of many new things for me as I move out of my parents' house for the first (and hopefully only) time.  Well, it really did (after some unforeseen delays) happen, and the dust is just now beginning to settle a bit.  There are countless things that could be said about this whole process and all it entails, so I really can't let it go by without blogging about it at least once.  Besides, it's really the main thing that's been happening in my life and my heart recently, so I can't imagine writing about anything else right now anyway.  What follows is a sampling of my thoughts from the past few weeks.  If it seems a bit random or chaotic, then it mirrors exactly the process of moving in general, at least to me.

This may seem self-evident, but one of the biggest things about moving is all the movement it causes.  It sometimes seems like everything is constantly in motion.  I think this is one of the best reasons to do it every so often, especially for people like me.  Sometimes I can just get very stationary in life, not doing much or making much progress in any direction.  Moving does not allow for that option.  I feel like I've learned so many things and in so doing gotten out of my own little world and into the real world at large to a much greater extent.  It's a wonderful, beautiful place to explore-- it makes me feel small, and that's a good thing.  It breaks the illusion that I am a big deal in a small world that I orchestrate to orbit myself.  Instead, I'm just a little man in a huge world that revolves around God's never-failing plan.  And that, my friends, is a comforting thought.

Another big thing that moves when you move is emotion.  It's a good thing that God started helping me learn to deal with my emotions before I started this process, because I had no idea that I could feel so many wildly different things in such a short space of time.  I have felt overwhelmed, exhilarated, afraid, happy, sad, peaceful, lonely, joyful, confident and any number of other things that I don't know how to name, sometimes all at once or in rapid-fire succession, sometimes at longer stretches.  I say stretches because that what it's doing to me in a big way-- it forces me to go to God, feel what I'm feeling, and bring it to him for help.  The only other option would be implosion, I think.  Another good reason for moving: anything that brings our constant desperate need for God into such sharp focus has to be a good thing.  He always comes through when he has to, and being closer to him is the end goal of life anyway...

Moving has really highlighted the value of relationships for me as well.  The people I care about mean more to me than ever now that I have my own house to welcome them into.  That being said, if I just stay in my house and retreat into myself, those relationships will suffer-- they need investment and time.  I mean, it helps if you have a wonderful, like-minded brother to move in with you, but even (or especially?) that kind of relationship is not self-sustaining.  It needs care and time to achieve the constant growth necessary for health... but it's worth it.  I would argue that relationship (i.e. friendship, love, community and real connection) is one of the biggest things worth striving for in all the world.  If you count relationship with God, then it definitely IS the most important.

And of course, moving teaches many more mundane or practical lessons as well.  For example, it is a better idea to wait for your roommate to help you move large furniture up two flights of stairs than to do it yourself because you just want to be finished with the task.  Similarly, it is a good idea to bring a quarter to Aldi when you go there and get a cart, rather than trying to hold your whole trip in one big box that was lying around.  On a related note, Marc's doesn't take Visa cards (or any other kind except Discover, it turns out).  What?!?! Who knew?  And who knew how expensive most of the things I really like to eat are?  And who knew that garbage disposal and recycling require a six-page manual?   Paying bills, repairing locks, cooking food... man, I'm starting to feel like a freaking adult.

And it's all exactly where I'm supposed to be.

A New Street

When I started this blog, I noted that in some ways it was a chronicle of my journey into the "real world," as far as I understood that at the time.  The first entry was over a year ago now, written the day after I turned in my last paper and shut the door on college.  The journey continues to be a long and strange one, and although I'm still not sure I know what the real world is, I believe I'm taking the next step towards it.  Tomorrow begins the one year lease of my first apartment, my first time out from under my parents' roof.

I have lived in this house where I sit right now for 19 1/2 years, which is a pretty high percentage of a life of only 23 1/2.  There are memories in every corner of it; in some ways it will always be home.  It's time, though, and it's been time for a while now, for me to move on.  I think it will be a spiritual change just as much if not more than a physical one.

It's funny, because for a long time I've thought of autumn as a time of new beginnings.  I know everything is dying and falling and such, but it seems to me that new things are always beginning in this time.  Maybe it's just that every school year offers the elusive possibility of a fresh start, but even now that I don't have that on my plate, things still feel new around the fall.

I have no idea what God wants to do in me in this season, but I want all of it.  He's giving me a new road to walk down, and I don't want to miss any of it by taking unnecessary detours.  I love my parents, and I'm blessed to know that I'll always have a place to return to if I need it.  But for now, God is sending me to be a light on a new street.  I look forward to writing again from there!  For now, I'll end with a poem I wrote a long, long time ago that somehow feels very fresh and new to me right now.  Things always cycle like that, I'm finding.  Out of death comes new life; out of old things, new things are born.  And fall doesn't really begin until you drink apple cider around a fire :)

Deeper



Floating in the same wind that brings
impending autumn, surrender
and freedom awaken together.
With hayrides and first
days of school
comes the dream that this fall
could be different,
the restless replaced
by anticipation,
a promise beating back
the patterns circling
viciously around—
a fall deeper, into one
transcending the changing seasons,
more faithful than the turning
leaves, who bears me in
their opposite direction,
resting in pursuit
and drinking apple cider
by the fire.

A Heart for Cleveland

One of the biggest things God has been doing in my life recently is teaching me how to feel. If you know me well at all, you know that I'm a thinker. I love to analyze things, and I tend to turn them over in my brain repeatedly until I arrive at what I deem to be a "solution," whatever that means. I've always wanted to have a logical reason for things, and that pretty much leaves emotional considerations in the background.

I've come to realize, though, that my unflappable logic and analysis has often just been another layer of my biggest weakness: pride. My refusal to feel was really just arrogance, an attempt to control the world through understanding. If I remain unaffected, I stay in control.

When it comes down to it, I really have believed that I was in control in my life. Now, it obviously takes some pretty selective memory to believe something like that in the face of all the craziness of life, but I was getting the hang of it. Problem was, the One who really does have the control wasn't too thrilled. He's not really a fan of competition for his position.

Long story short, God started shattering my perceptions of control by using my emotions. Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to make yourself feel something (e.g. joy, love, etc.), but if you have, you know that it really doesn't work. If you haven't, give it a shot sometime. I don't think it's possible, at least not for long. Anyway, the conclusion of all my logic and analysis was that if I had all the answers, I should be happy. Needless to say, I wasn't.

To give an example, I'll share a poem I wrote somewhere in the midst of trying to analyze my way through life. During my Junior year of college, my mom had totalled her car (she was fine) and was borrowing mine, so I had to take the bus/train to school for a while. The experience had quite an effect on me, and I wrote this in a subconscious attempt to deal with what I was feeling but didn't want to admit.


Commute

Today I am riding through
the steel bowels of a single
manmade mountain. It isn’t
very impressive, but it is all
the subway we have here. I
haven’t eaten for hours,
but I don’t get off as I reach
the city center, a hard rock
that only turns to living flesh
at certain quite specific
times. Those times, you can
lose yourself in the hurrying
humanity and quietly pretend
you have the answer to the
endless iron question. Other times,
it’s better to pass quickly by
the dirty Modernist monuments
and hope you can catch
the next bus at your connection
further on.
Thursday, 4:34
by the market tower clock
and I am boarding the 4:25.
The conglomerate smell of the
market is all I will enjoy today, not
the shouting vendors as they
make their best deal or set up
the stuffed pig’s head at
just the right eye-level
to scare the children. I don’t
have time for the homemade
glazed doughnuts from the
baker in the far northwest corner
or the fresh produce that
is somewhat less fresh than
the sellers say, but still a bit
more fresh than it smells.
No,
today my goal is just to make
it home, taking the redline 66X
and the 20A through the shades
of culture, death and life
to my refuge from the smoldering
embers in the dying heart
of the fire, where I can set myself
apart and analyze as I prepare
for the inevitable onrush of
tomorrow and my next ride.





I knew even then that this withdrawn analysis was not going to be the answer, but writing this poem provided me with the first realization that that's what I was doing. I had always thought of myself as a city kid, in touch with the problems of the street. Really though, despite the fact that I lived within the city, I had left it, to protect my heart from the hardness and pain. I was taking sociology classes, learning how to analyze the problems of the city without really feeling them, trading emotions for statistics. As I hope you can tell from the poem, I love my city (well, most of it anyway), but I was turning my back on it.

Even more pressing on my thoughts was my own survival in finishing college and managing my life. I spent a lot of time in survival mode in those days. Living like that gets tiring though, and God had other things in store. First, he had to bring me face to face with my own emotions, which turned out to be darker and much less controlled than I had thought. I had to learn, as strange as it might sound, to feel what I was really feeling, even if it meant admitting that I had no idea what to do with it and very little (if any) control over it. It's a journey I'm still walking on, and probably will be for quite awhile.

As I feel my own emotions more and more, though, I'm finding that God has more for me than just that. He also wants me to feel His emotions! I think we can easily forget that God feels things just like we do. Actually, I guess a better way to put that would be that he feels things even more deeply and profoundly than we do. And the biggest thing he feels? Love.

In asking God what he feels, I have become much more conscious of his overpowering love. For me, for others, for his Son, his church, everyone. God feels sorrow mixed with love, anger mixed with love and joy because of love. In fact, one of the most amazing and praiseworthy things about God is the way that he loves us beyond explanation, despite ourselves.

So, back to my poem for a minute. The problems of Cleveland are pretty overwhelming, and you can see a lot of them if you take the rapid from University Circle to the W. 25th street bus. They seem too big to handle from the perspective of just me and my thoughts and feelings. When I look at my city, I can feel frustrated, afraid, or even depressed.

But what does God feel about Cleveland? In most cases, I'm guessing it's something like compassion. I'm sure there are things that make him happy, angry and sad as well, but I think the overriding current is compassion for people who have lost their way. Therein lies the difference between God's thoughts and mine. I see large-scale societal problems that I don't even know how to begin to change, and the result is the overwhelming emotions I've tried to get rid of. God sees the problems and could rectify them instantly, but his heart is for the people. Although he could change things on the grand scale, his method of choice is compassion.

That's why it's so important for us to be in touch with God's heart, not just to know but to feel what he feels. Compassion, it turns out, is not nearly as overwhelming as fixing all the deep-seeded problems that plague my city. Each person I see on my commute through Cleveland is someone God loves, and I can treat them like that. I don't need to analyze so much as I need to feel God's love, and if I have no idea where to start, I can just start where I am. If I can just do that, I can break out of my protective bubble and really start making a difference.

And if we all could do that... who knows what could happen here?

A new beginning, an old name

Today is the first school day in the past 17 years or so on which I can say that I am not a student. I mean, I guess I don't technically graduate for another two weeks, but I've turned in all my work so I'm done. I can't believe it! And may I say, it feels pretty good.


So, in some ways, the inception of this blog marks my transition into what some like to call "the real world," whatever that is. As I exit academia for the time being, though, I find that I have a lot of thoughts stirring inside me that I'd like to share, and I'm hoping that other people might find them interesting. The only way of finding out, I think, is to put them somewhere in the public view and see what happens.


I think I'll begin at what I see as the beginning. If you've known me for awhile, you recognize the name in the url for this blog. I've had that online name for I don't even know how long. So even though this time in my life is a new beginning, I chose to keep it because it really sums up what I want to be, and what I want this blog to be. I'll start, then, with the story of this old name.



I imagine that streetlights are a phenomenon with which most will be familiar, although suburbanites may not have seen one for awhile. The numbers attached, 5814, are the real story here. The reference being made by those numbers is quite literally a reference: Ephesians 5: 8-14. It says:

"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: 'Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.' "

The connection of the verse to streetlights is fairly obvious, I suppose. The passage talks about being a light in the darkness and making things visible, which is obviously what streetlights do. To understand the more personal connection for me, you need to know three things:



1. There is a streetlight directly outside my bedroom window.

2. My house is old and doesn't have AC, so in the summer the windows are always open.

3. I am one of the world's lightest sleepers.



So, in the summertime, all it takes is one gust of wind strong enough to move the curtains for me to have a streetlight shining right on my face, which never fails to wake me up instantly. Wake up, O sleeper! Get it?



In all seriousness, though, I think that God's light has the same effect. I want to bring that kind of light that shocks people awake to my darkened city... The kind of light that makes things visible... The kind that raises the dead. God knows that Cleveland needs it, and he's looking for a generation of these kinds of lights (That's why it's not just a singular streetlight). I'm sure I'll be writing more on that topic later, but for now that's what this whole thing is all about and why I feel the impetus to do this (even though I guarantee that some of my posts will be nothing more than random and nothing short of ridiculous).

A final thought on streetlights to close for today: Recently, Christy Wimber spoke at my church, and she said something (although I don't think she's the original author of it) that I don't think I'll ever forget: "Set yourself on fire, and people will come from miles around to watch you burn." That's how I want to serve God. And it's fitting, because in the early church, Christians really were streetlights in the most literal sense: Nero would coat them in pitch, stick them on posts and light 'em up so people could see at night on the roads. So while I'm not planning to die anytime soon, that kind of radical commitment is inspiring. I'll light up this city whatever way I can.