From kissin you goodbye
From kissin you goodbye every night"
-Sondre Lerche, My Hands are Shaking
In reference to rva, it's been so bittersweet. I think I'm caught up in trying to say goodbye when I'm starting to think I don't have to... They are my extended family, ones who I can never say goodbye to, right?
This past week, it was my fall break, the best fall break for me ever. I visited old friends and I got to have my dose of deja vou biking down memory lane, literally, from my old house onto campus in the fall breeze. I even found myself wishing I had my fluorescent pink glittens like days of old...I have such an affinity towards this place and to these faces. Ha, it's crazy how you can feel like you can pick up where you left off, and simultaneously have the understanding that things are never the same.
I also got to visit my sister at her school and have some quality time with her. It was so refreshing to be able to talk with someone who can feel the way I do, who mourns with me, and laughs with me. Sometimes I think I'm trying to live vicariously through her since she's living out the college life at a university away from home... but i don't know..
So walking through all of these things these past few days I feel as if I had awaken memories I'd forgotten, it's the whole "out of sight, out of mind," kind of syndrome, now being reversed, "in sight, in mind." I'm being reminded of what I've missed, what I've sort of abandoned.
The Merry Monk said it so well when he wrote:
"God is Home. To me, he is the ultimate expression of what I call “home.”
I only experience the scent or echoes of Home in my family and friends…my home. Most of the time I’m longing for love, intimacy, security and permanence…Home. My hope and your hope is that one day God will welcome us fully into himself…Home."
So in regards to my visit, it reawakened the feelings of being at home so robust that I am beginning to look at the wilderness that I'm in so differently. This whole season is so mirrored in the scriptures of Abraham, Moses, the apostles, and within the picture of the church and the bridegroom. The image embodied by each of these stories is best identified by the word "abandonment." Abraham left his own country to follow the leadings of the Spirit. Moses abandoned his royal authority and went to the desert. The apostles dropped their trade. And the Bride leaves her father's house to become one flesh with the Bridegroom.
I forget that abandoning everything is actually painful. It is suffering. The wilderness is supposed to be both bitter and sweet, most definitely. "For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up." Hosea 6:1 And for a while I was trying my best not to feel the pain in this kind of suffering.
Reflecting on all of this, I am almost convinced that Jesus's entire life lived on this earth was His own wilderness, His own abandonment, and that He died alone on that cross because He wanted to rid this world of the sin of loneliness (aka separation from God), and yet He allows us to dwell in seasons of loneliness in order that we can model the essence of brokenness (which is the language of beauty from His view). Broken things are meant to offer up a sweet fragrance of sacrifice. And feeling pain, to lament and travail, and to suffer makes us more human. This facet of every man's humanity is supposed to, in part, embody the sufferings of Christ, in this we can share in His sufferings. haha it's this suffering that makes us so much more human, and consequently more like Christ. It makes us a friend to God.
Along with this suffering, I have been confronted by the opposing reality of the closing impartation many of the New Testament writers closed their letters with, this "Grace and Peace." Grace to walk with devotion, and peace to understand we will fail, though failure is something everyone wants to avoid. And it's this peace that comes out of the revelation of who He is. He is transcendent, the righteous Judge who loves mercy, and lovingkindness.
Suffering, and Grace and Peace?? Can these coexist? Yes, I call it the "whirlwind effect." It's tumultuous and violent all around you, and yet He keeps us in sight, in the eye of it, the only place at rest. It's the cloud by day and fire by night. This wilderness is rejoicing in the grace that he offers us, and yet going through the heat of the desert to give Him what He rightfully deserves. Oh how He rightly deserves all of me!
***I apologize for how unlinear my thought-processes are. I'm thinking I should probably blog more often so that I don't have to do a dump every month or so and risk the chances of not being cohesive.
