And these feelings – when they’re stirred – are not substantial.
A lingering emptiness long unnoticed is recalled.
It’s not a presence that reminds me of what I had.
It’s an absence that reminds me of what I lost.
Of her, of I, of us together.
If I’m honest I would say that I still love her.
(Though as time passes I think less and less with those words.)
Like a wound that heals slowly and imperfectly
It becomes routine and I am ever surprised
To discover that I’m still limping.
Now I know her faults and all the ways she wronged me.
But still… I know the way she smiled in the morning,
And I know she meant – even for that moment only –
The words she spoke as she pulled me down beside her.
The firelight dancing on her skin.
Tired
It’s the freight ships I didn’t expect. Enormous rusted hulls, broad flat decks with stained white towers. My mind keeps wandering back to them. I find myself wondering: how do you get a job on one of those ships? Could I do it? What’s involved? Part of me badly wants to find out… but then I wonder: what sort of people work on those ships? Coarse men, absorbed in a world of working and drinking and fucking? Where would I fit into that company? I’ve seen too much hurt, the consequences of too much chauvinism and objectification to be able to just sit by idly in the midst of all that. It wouldn’t take long for me to be hated in such a crowd as that… and where would that leave me? Or am I simply stereo-typing labour workers, playing off the negative impressions I received from those I knew working on oil rigs?
What I had expected was the islands. Driving up the coast sandwiched between the mountains and the ocean I wasn’t surprised to find myself dreaming of working on the islands. Living away from all this industry and concrete, working outside with my body.
Something is always calling to me.
Come away, come away. Disappear. Escape.
Here is peace, here is laughter. Here is rest.
How long will I feel this pull?
Like a moth following the moon, every lamp along the way urges me to turn aside – especially when the clouds come and darken the sky and the rain makes it hard for frail wings to fly.
Via Dolorosa
Whenever I have been away for awhile I find it so hard to get back in.
There is so much hurt, so much rage, so much brokenness here. Here the waters are deep and slick with blood and everywhere I look another person is drowning.
How many times will I have to jump back in?
Whenever I have been away for awhile it’s like I return to strap on a bag of rocks. A bag full of hurt that cannot be carried alone. Not that I can carry it for them, although somehow we seem to make progress together.
How many times will I have to carry that load?
I once worked alongside of an elderly woman who was full of dignity and beauty and wisdom. As I talked about these feelings she told me about friends who had worked in this field and were unable to take it. They never became calloused, they never got hard. They would go home every night and cry themselves to sleep. In the end they ended up leaving. They weren’t cut out for this work. She questioned if I was the same as them.
But I find myself wondering if this is what it means to lay down my life for those I love. Maybe that’s not just romantic language, maybe it’s a real death I experience every day. Little by little, until, one day, maybe I too will be shattered by the storm.
Whenever I have been away for awhile I find a voice inside of me that says, “You are too sensitive to carry this cross.”
But there is always another deeper voice responding, “No, you are too sensitive not to carry this cross.”
Farewell to Morality
“And he [Jesus] said to him [a lawyer], 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
–Matthew 22:37-40
For as long as I sought moral perfection I was unable to attain it. The more I tried the more I failed. Even in the simple things, the most clear-cut and obvious things that were impossible to rationalize, I found myself unable to create any lasting positive change. There were moments of conviction, moments of passion but they were fleeting and inconsequential.
I have given up the pursuit of some transcendent state of moral perfection.
After all, that's not what we are called to as followers of Jesus.
Christians need to give up the pursuit of moral perfection.
Instead we are called to journey in love relationships with God, with others, and with the rest of the cosmos. We should be pursuing love relationships, in particular we are to pursue love relationships with those who are most vulnerable – those who have been abandoned, abused and shattered.
It is only after we have begun to prioritize love and journey in those relationships that we discover that love truly is at the heart of the law and prophets. Suddenly we discover that the morality we were incapable of attaining as an end of it's own is something that occurs as we are transformed by intimacy. Things that always seemed forced become natural. Actions that seemed alien, that seemed to belong to the character of a transcendent God – and certainly not to the character of a finite being like myself – suddenly are the only actions that seem to be true to who I am.
When we journey in love relationships the sayings ascribed to Jesus and Paul suddenly gather a whole new coherence. What once seemed a poetic phrase about love and Law, or an abstract theological argument about grace and Law, suddenly make practical sense. Increasingly I find myself thinking, “Of course that's the way it is. Of course.” It just makes sense.
The problem is that the church has prioritized moral perfection, often at the expense of love. Not only is love neglected but by making morality the foundation of a Christian ethic the church gives itself an impossible task and dooms itself to failure. It is only on the foundation of love that any sense of moral perfection (or understanding of what that even looks like) becomes possible.
I've given up on perfection, in the end I think that whole idea has a lot more to do with Greek philosophers than with the God of the Bible.
What I have not given up on is love. It is love that lies at the heart of the Triune God.
Illusions of Grandeur
I think I am more self-conscious than I used to be.
That is to say, I have become more self-absorbed.
Whereas before I could care less about what others thought of me, I became accustomed to being liked and even admired. As a result I have come to lose the very characteristics that produced those relationships in the first place. I have come to care greatly about what others think of me – and I have come to expect them to think highly of me.
Now, I've always been a shy person, but for the last half dozen years I've been able to hide that fairly well.
To be shy and arrogant, that's when the trouble truly begins.
A Tenderness Recalled
It’s funny the things that I end up missing the most.
It’s funny how there’s really no way to describe those memories.
A scent, a movement, a look in her eyes. That feeling of unveiled joy, of intimacy, of knowing and being known.
A gentle caress, a luxurious resting, an embrace shared in the first waking moments when the sheets are warm and the air is cool. Half awake but mostly sleeping, a subtle shift of her shoulders and hips bringing me closer to her.
There are no words for such moments. There was a childlikeness, an innocence, an uninhibited playfulness at those times. A complete loss of self-consciousness, only the awareness of loving and being loved.
The moments of tenderness are the moments I have come to treasure more than the moments of passion.
Life Abundant
He says, “God is good!” but what I think he means is that God helps those who help themselves. I don't know how much he realizes that he has blurred the line between the two.
It's as if he is playing a game so I play along:
“God is good!”
“Yes, he is.”
Only I know it's a game. The problem is that I think he's played the game for so long that he's lost track of the deception. The illusion has become increasingly concrete. The game has become his reality.
And I really don't know how to tell him that. Or even show him that. Really, I don't think it's possible for me to. It was a passing meeting and I don't think our paths will cross again. So I respond affirmatively but, in the end, I mean something completely different.
…there your heart will be also.
“'He pled the cause of the afflicted and needy; then it was well. Is not that what it means to know me?' Declares the LORD. 'But your eyes and your heart are intent only upon your own dishonest gain, and on shedding innocent blood and on practicing oppression and extortion.'”
Jeremiah 22.16f
How do you teach middle and upper class Christians that journeying with people who are suffering, journeying with the poor and oppressed, the abused and abandoned, is at the heart of following Jesus?
They say that they have harmed no one in getting wealth, in fact they are defined by integrity. I say they haven't realized the depth of corruption that exists in our society.
I try to tell them that God aligns himself with the oppressed, that God sides with the poor (and as a result often sides against the rich), and if we are pursuing godliness we need to do the same, and they walk away offended. Too selfish(?) to admit that following Jesus means carrying a cross, too scared(?) to admit that carrying a cross is actually tangible suffering and not just flowery rhetoric.
This, after all, isn't what they've grown up hearing in church. So I try and tell them the stats, the overwhelming amount of passages in the Bible that speak of wealth and poverty, and of God siding with the oppressed but they don't believe me. I quote specific passages and they quickly try to rationalize and spiritualize what is a concrete call.
They tell me rich people need Jesus too, and I tell them that maybe the rich will start finding Jesus if they started giving up their riches. They tell me there needs to be people to share Jesus with rich people and I tell them that we should then be telling the rich that they're only fooling themselves into thinking they're following Jesus if they're still accumulating wealth.
I try to remind them that we're talking about relationships, we're talking about journeying with people who are suffering, but they can't get passed their relationships with their possessions.
I remember Jesus saying it's harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom than it is for a camel to go through the eye of the needle. They talk about how the eye of the needle was a gate in Jerusalem that was very small. I tell them that for a camel to get through the gate it had to dump it's pack and crawl through on it's knees. They say, yeah, but it got through right? And I say, start loving people more (or for the first time) and loving your stuff less.
They say, yeah, but look at what I give to the poor. And I say maybe you should focus less on what you're giving to the poor and more on how much you're taking from them. If you steal 100% and then give back 10% I'm not gonna call you a hero.
They say, Jesus is talking about where our heart is, do we own our things or do our things own us? I say Jesus says that where our treasure is there our heart lies also – and let's not fool ourselves into thinking otherwise. They say Jesus is just emphasizing he should be number one in our lives. I say that Jesus is saying don't start following me unless you've realized that there is a tremendous cost. He's not number one, he's the only one.
I try to tell them, start loving people who are suffering, and they walk away reassuring themselves that it's okay to be affluent. They admit that there are dangers to wealth, but they're up to the challenge… and before they know it, they've forgetten the suffering and the poor once again.
In Memory of Her
I saw Trinity one last time before I left the city.
“My pimp’s in jail, eh.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Yeah, another girl ran away again and this time when he caught her he cut off all her toes. He’s been put away for six years.”
“So you’re free from him?”
“Yeah, I’m working for the corporation now. Gone high-track. There’s a dress code.”
The only thing Trinity took from the clothing room was a beige jacket, I think it was actually made by Ralph Lauren or some big-name designer. It was a nice jacket. She left with it over her arm. I offered her another shirt and some nice shoes but she wouldn’t take them.
“You mean something less slutty?”
“No,” I really wasn’t saying that, “I was just thinking that it will be getting colder later tonight… At least take the shoes. Your feet look like they’re killing you.”
Trinity had come in wearing a bandanna as a top, a pair of stained white pants that looked painted on, and some pink high-heels that had sequin flowers on the strap. Her body was spilling out everywhere. Her hips, her breasts, her stomach, her calves. All this and more could be yours for the low, low price of… I spent a lot of time looking at those pink high-heels.
“No, I’ve got to wear these shoes, they’re part of the dress code.”
She kept up a constant dialogue while she was looking through the clothing room. Talking about finally being free of her pimp and admiring the clothes that are cute. Just briefly, and more to herself than to me she makes a comment, just one remark and then she’s off admiring another shirt.
“You know it’s not like I enjoy doing this. It’s not like I want to be this person.”
She’s still a slave. This time for a richer man who offers a better reward for a job well done. But chances are that his teeth are bigger. Low-track pimps are thugs, men who beat their girls with pipes, and put out cigarettes on their thighs… but they need to money every girl makes. High-track pimps are more organized. Not so desperate to take a girl back – more willing to make her disappear completely. That way the other girls are less likely to run away in the first place.
As we were walking back down the hall together we ran into a group of church leaders who were meeting with the shelter’s chaplain. I was slightly embarrassed. I had hesitated to take Trinity to the clothing room with me – it doesn’t look good to be alone on the second floor with an attractive (and hardly clothed) sex trader worker. Still, I figured it would be better than leaving her waiting at the front-desk where a constant stream of guys would be coming to look her up and down. Nobody tries to hide the fact that they’re checking her out and licking their chops… after all it’s not like she’s hiding much from their view.
As we passed the church group one of the men looked at her, then looked at me and gave me a wink and a knowing smile. I wanted to punch him in the teeth.
Exile Revisited
For a long time I've been struggling with the idea of exile – convinced that the corporate church in North America is in exile yet wondering if all genuine members of the people of God are also in exile. Can I possess the eschatological spirit and yet still be in exile? I thought of people like Joshua and Caleb who journeyed in the wilderness with a body of people rejected by God, I thought about Daniel, Shadrach and the gang, and wondered, is there a sense in which even the remnant is in exile?
There is a tragic moment in Ezekiel when the prophet watches the Shekinah depart from the temple. At that moment the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple is assured. Yet there is also the idea that God's Shekinah departs to go into exile with her people. So I wondered, is there a sense in which I am in exile yet God is suffering in exile with me? Is there a sense in which I can possess the Spirit of Jesus, interceding on my behalf as I am in exile?
I thought that the answer to those questions was yes. But now I'm coming to another conclusion.
If my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, if I do possess the spirit of the eschaton, if I am Jesus to the world that I live in, then I cannot be in exile. Rather I am the Shekinah of God that journeys with a people who are still in exile. Therefore, I am no more in exile than Jesus was. Jesus journeyed with a people in exile yet he never was in exile. Rather he embodied the in-breaking kingdom. Even if he suffered some of the consequences of the people in exile he was not in exile. Rather he suffered those consequences to bring the people out of exile. Therefore, I am not in exile with God suffering alongside of me. Rather I embody the Spirit of God who journeys with a people in exile, sharing in their sufferings in order to bring them out.