Already a month into this summer, and so much has happened. I always feel like I experience much, but have very few words to articulate them. I shall attempt to divulge anyhow.
The past week I've been storming through my room, getting rid of all the things I've accumulated in the past 7 years. I found an assortment of old shirts, one including a top that had Alcatraz written on the front. How bizarre is that? What in the entire nation?! What young girl would want a shirt with the name of a place infamous for imprisonment and excommunication stamped on it?? Not I. I don't think I've ever worn it.
It tickled me to find little notes I'd written to myself sprawled on the margins of my many spiral-bound notebooks I've kept since my freshman year of college. They were embarrassing, encouraging, inspiring, silly... child-like. One read, "Jesus is in love with you," written with a pink marker and a rainbow drawn behind it. The only thing missing from it were unicorns.
It humbled me to say the least, as it gave me a more accurate perspective of my walk with the Lord these past few years. After being able to read through my old journals, and through all the pithy scribbles, a much predicted nostalgia came over me.
While most of my writings were comprised of bad theology, it didn't matter, it still produced in me an awe at the unadulterated zeal I carried in Christ Jesus.
And so, I am left longing to be recaptured by the Uncreated One again, to be drawn away and wooed. I am not talking about mere emotions of bliss and butterflies, but about the glances that become a gaze. It is a selah of sorts, to which the longing to be conquered by the Lover of my soul has stilled my busyness. Oh to be won over again and again! And oh to be reawakened to the scriptures that read, "For your Maker is your Husband - the Lord Almighty is His name - the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, He is called the God of all the earth." Isaiah 54:5 Friends, I am quite smitten by this God.
In refocusing my affections on Jesus I've made efforts to do life a little bit differently than I have been. Many of us have heard the coined phrase, "We are human beings, not human doings." So cleverly thought of, and yet I think since the beginnings of humanity, we have been in the habit of compartmentalizing every facet of our lives, including the simple activities of being and doing. I realize though, if I were to separate the two, then I would be depriving myself of a holistic life that Jesus desires for me. I will even go so far as to say that it is imperative to do away with this particular distinction in order to live a life that embodies the one that Christ intended for us.
Stanely Hauerwas lectured on a similar theme about a month ago when I was in Pasadena, CA. Hauerwas explained that when one makes a habit out of an activity, one is not removed from the character of the activity itself, therefore, if the habit you are participating in is virtuous, you become virtuous. It's transforming. This is doing affecting being. On the other side of the coin, Hauerwas described that it is our own principles, desires, and virtue that affects the activities that we engage in - this time it is being affecting doing. The thing I gathered from this was that our being and doing are two parts of a whole, both interdependent on each other.
In Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis points out a similar compartmentalization and calls for the same interdependence of sorts. Dealing with the differences between the sacred and the secular he writes, "All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest, and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not. Christianity does not simply replace our natural life and substitute a new one; it is rather a new organisation which exploits, to its own supernatural ends, these natural materials." (my own emphasis included) He argues that it is not the activity we are engaging in that determines whether an activity is spiritual, but rather, it is the invitation to Christ to join us in our doing that makes our activity sacred. We are most definitely both physical and spiritual beings, and to invite Jesus into our doing allows us to settle into the very spiritual nature of our being. Practicing this is practicing a life of sacraments - the activity of God being present in our own activities.
This interdependence plays into the labor I offer as I serve those around me. There's an art to this, a discipline if you will. Too often I get into cycles where I am serving others because they asked me to, instead of letting my doing be an expression of my care for them. The emphasis here is the work I am producing, rather than my Person who is carrying out the certain deed. Viewing my service to others this way becomes detrimental as it puts value on my works rather than on who I am. A life lived like this begets a life lived after rewards. However, if my doing was no longer separated from my being, I would be doing away with my services being matters of my own worth, and restoring dignity to the human soul.
Before expounding on the restoration of the human soul, I must state that it is only by the grace of God that we have the means to serve anyone. Jesus is the full expression of the Father, He does as His Father wills. Friends, we are the expression of Jesus on the earth. For any person to serve another, that is a miracle, and it is by this Jesus we can. In light of the Person of Jesus who lives in us (John 14:20 "...I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you."), I give myself no credit if I produce anything good. I am merely the branch that carry's His fruit.
By living a life that practices doing and being simultaneously, we are restoring the kind of integrity Jesus calls us to, as He Himself embodies this too well. He did not come to solely bless us, but He gave us His Personhood. In this way, we are honoring God's Person in us and through us, not just His Divinity. This is what restores dignity to the human soul, by living in such a way that no longer puts worth on what we have done, but gives value to only One who is worthy, this God who we believe lives in us.
Thomas Merton wrote, "God is asking me, the unworthy, to forget about my worthiness and that of my brothers, and dare advance in the love which has redeemed and renewed us all in God's likeness. And to laugh, after all, at the preposterous idea of "worthi-ness." I know more clearly what he means by this.
My labor is now no longer a mere service, but it translates into something that is truly sacrificial, a true work of the Lord. My services are instead an offering of my very being. Yes, in the words of F. Buechner, we are called to be food and drink for one another. Let us be as Paul who, the scriptures say, poured himself out like a drink offering.
So. This is my new mantra: I honor the Lord who works through me, and the Lord who rests in you, restoring dignity.
Namaste in the Name of Jesus my beloveds.
