Divine Plagiarism

We all know the story of the Starving Artist. The guy just trying to scrape by until he gets his big break, all the while his parents asking when he is going to grow up and become an accountant. There is something in us that admires the girl who throws everything away to chase her dream. The childlike heart of the dreamer reaches the younger parts of our own hearts. But dreams are never free, and their costs are often assessed against those in relationship with the dreamers.

John Boyd was a legendary fighter pilot, a man who shaped the world’s most powerful Air Force. He even has a building of the Fighter Weapons School named after him. Yet in pursuing his dream, he neglected his family. In the final accounting, his children resented him, and his marriage was a mess. B.F. Skinner, the renowned behavioral scientist, unleashed his dreams directly upon his family with horrific results. These are the successes, the ones who got their big break. Too often, the man who burns with passion will singe those closest to him. Passion must be tempered by something greater than itself.

The Greek philosophers saw passion as an impurity of the soul, a remnant of the animalistic drives within us. They despised it just as they despised the flesh. The Scriptures do not give us this option. King David dances in the streets before the Lord. The prophets tell of their consuming zeal for the Temple of God. Jesus Christ embodies that zeal, overturning tables and driving merchants from the Court of the Gentiles. So passion is a driving thing. It is as different for each of us as we are different from each other. And though it requires God’s discipline to keep it from running wild, passion is a gift of the Creator.

But like any other gift, passion is not license. It does not exempt you from your responsibilities. Nor from the consequences for your actions. There is something inspiring about the struggling guitarist crammed in with the other band members in the tour van, eating a three A.M. dinner at Waffle House after the show. (Superpowers by Five Iron Frenzy. Back in the day. Oh yeah.) There is nothing inspiring about the trust fund baby getting his fifth degree in performing arts because he doesn’t feel like leaving college. Even less inspiring (less than nothing is pretty bad) is the man who leaves his family to find ‘true love’ with a woman who is not his wife. In the name of ‘throwing it all away for love,’ men have abandoned the laws of God and of man. There is no glory in this, for these men only pursue the love of self.

Here we see the difference between passion as license and passion as service. Passion as license takes what rightfully belongs to others in the name of its self-centered dreams. It is the child of pride, and pride makes its demands immediately and constantly. Pride grasps, greedily closing its hands around dreams. Love holds dreams with an open hand before the Dreamgiver, trusting that He does not plant desire in vain. Passion as service is the daughter of love, and love is patient. She gives itself to others, first paying debts rightfully owed, then blessing others in the overflow. She counts the cost, and is content to wait if the price is too high right now.

Count the cost of your dreams. Not just the cost of getting there. The cost of being there. My dad told me once that over the lifetime of a car, the dealership makes more money on repairs than on the initial sale. Perhaps, in this regard, dreams have something in common with cars. We focus so much on getting there that we don’t really think much about what we’ll do once were there. Of course, you can’t really sort out repair costs until you are sure you can actually afford the car, and this is true with dreams as well. There really are very few NFL players, world class artists, neurosurgeons, astronauts, Broadway stars, or successful screenwriters, especially considering the pool of aspirants. You have to run the numbers with a sober eye to your gifts. If you’re six foot three, you probably won’t ever be the winning jockey in the Kentucky Derby. (You never know, though.) So you look at your chances, you consign yourself to eating Ramen for a while, and you take your shot. Say it works out. Now what?

We find ourselves at the intersection of passion and purpose when our dreams actually pan out. Yet the very mechanics of passion ensure that we cannot simply put down a lawn chair and camp out in that place. In the space between dreams and fulfillment, there is often an expectation of arrival; we think that when we get our big break, we’ll have finally have made it. We think that at some point we’ll be able to coast for a while. Passion just doesn’t work that way. Excellence happens once in a while when you pursue your passions for fun. If you’re lucky, it will happen when the right person is looking. Say that person gives you your dream shot, say he pays you to do what you love. He hired you because he saw excellence in you. Therefore, his expectation is excellence, and this is what he pays you for. The excellence you once celebrated is now demanded from you.

My friend R. is a fighter pilot. He flies one of the world’s most advanced aircraft in one of the world’s premier combat wings. By any objective measure, less than a thousand people worldwide could claim to have comparable aeronautical skills and training. (I really hate doing anything to further inflate fighter guys’ egos. I’m making an important point, though. Bear with me.) Really, a lot of luck and hard work came together to get him where he is. For the weekend flyer, flying is always fun. You shoot an excellent approach in a Cessna, and you feel good about it. If our weekend flyer scored a ride in my friends’ fighter, he would have an awesome time and would surely be telling his friends all about it for some time to come. So naturally, the weekend flyer expects that my friend’s life is one incredible day of aviation joy after another. Really, though, my friend’s life consists of 4 A.M. showtimes, constant studying, tedious five hour briefs, brutal two hour debriefs, continuous critiques, and the never-ending expectation to perform at a world-class level. He is always under demands to demonstrate his right to be counted as a fighter pilot. And you never really arrive. There is always another upgrade, another school, another qual you need to get. I imagine that it is little different for a world-class athlete or surgeon or academic. My friend R. tells me that sometimes you have to remind yourself that you love what you do.

Really, we register joy more in changes than in constancy. Perhaps it is because we have not learned to be content. Perhaps there is something about us that gets accustomed to things being a certain way. Regardless, you just get used to your life, it just becomes normal after a while. If all the people around you are movie stars, you just get used to hanging out with movie stars. Where normal people have friends from college on their cell phone contact list, you have names that make the covers of People magazine. A lot of things are far more cool from the outside looking in. Unless, of course, you buy into the hype and start believing that you are all the things that people think you are. Then you become an insufferable jerk, and that’s no good either. ‘Meaningless, all is meaningless, says the teacher.‘ Even in living your dreams, you cannot escape the Book of Ecclesiastes. After all, the book’s author was living every dream he ever had. Still, it is a blessing and a joy to do something you love. Passions are worth pursuing.

All blessings exist in context. Dreams are contextualized in time and space. The time for your dreams might not be now. The pieces may not all be in place, you may not be ready, or perhaps you may not yet completely understand your dream. Trying to pursue it though your own will ends in disaster. But this does not mean that you should leave your dreams behind. He does not give us dreams in vain; He uniquely gifts us so that we can gift others, so that we can give our gifts back to Him. So never give up on passions and dreams. Give them to Him instead. It may not yet be His time for your dreams, but He will work out your dreams in His time. Nothing comes back from Him void.

In the meantime, take care of your responsibilities. The man who is faithful with one city gets ten, the servant who invests a few talents gets many. Take care of the responsibilities incurred in the pursuit of current desires, and you will learn to be trustworthy with the greater responsibilities you will incur in the pursuit of your deeper dreams. If you do a good job with the things already in your hands, keeping them open before Him, you may find Him placing bigger and bigger things into those hands. He is faithful, and He promises that He will give us more than we can ask or imagine. Our dreams may not show up the way we expect, or even on this side of eternity, but they will show up. This is His promise: no eye has seen or ear heard of the things He has prepared for those who love Him. We will experience the fulfillment of that promise only in His presence.

Passion, like desire, will never fully arrive on this side of eternity. It is designed to bring us to God; only an impoverished desire will find itself content in this world. As the Spirit trains our passions, we will find that we feel those passions most strongly along the path that He sets out for us, a path that leads to Him. On that path, our dreams and our responsibilities can learn to coexist under His majesty. There, and only there, we will find the ultimate intersection of passion and purpose.

‘I’m not afraid,’ said Luke. ‘You will be…’ said Yoda. - Star Wars Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back.

When questioned about continuing to write fairytales and children’s books, C.S. Lewis responded that ‘When I became a man, I put away childish things. One of those things was the desire to appear grown up.’ A friend of mine tells me about sitting in a Williamsburg, NYC coffeeshop, watching two artist-types sipping lattes over, no kidding, a copy of Finnegan’s Wake. As they try to out-sophisticate each other with more and more disinterested and disdainful utterances, she thinks to herself, ‘I can’t believe this is isn‘t caricature.’ I do not mean to malign the goateed, Burning-Man-Festival-attending, James-Joyce-reading crowd. I have a number of artist (pronounced ar-teest) friends, and I am continually impressed by their creative faculties. Still, there is some truth in Lewis’ retort. We really do go to great lengths to look grown up, and it is generally ends up being pretty childish.

It is not the adult that starts smoking, but the child who wants to appear grown up. The adult rejects out of hand as foolish the concept of inhaling the fumes of burning leaves. When a child decides to become an adult, they put away the need to convince others of their worthiness of the title. You don’t need to pad the resume when you’ve already got the job. So the teenage girl wears high heels and makeup, not the forty year old woman. The girl is concerned with appearing as if she is a grown-up; the woman is too busy with the concerns of a grown-up to care about looking like one. It is the boy who sets out on the rites of passage; the man has long since passed those rites. The child is the one with something to prove; the adult has already come to peace with the idea that he has nothing to prove. Trying to prove one’s adulthood rarely does much to accomplish its intended end, and it usually has quite the opposite effect.

There is a theory that goes something like, ‘if I pretend like fascinating things are dull, then I can convince others that my life is much more interesting than it really is.’ Under the ‘cool by not caring’ plan, you must remain safely aloof from anything that could excite you to joy or fear, for this is the only way to convince everyone that you are above such concerns. Really, it doesn’t make much sense. You try to establish your identity by devaluing everything you encounter in the light of some mythical good you only claim to have. While trying to convince others of your value, you spit on everything of real value. Things that should be joyful, exciting, or scary all become passé in our self-invited pretentious leprosy. We cut ourselves off from the excitement that comes with a rightfully scary endeavor and the joy that comes with its accomplishment.

We treat love in this manner. We are like people who want to fly model aircraft, rather than step into cockpit. We remain safely aloof, feet planted firmly on the ground. We keep the excitement manageable, the fear manageable and the joy manageable. We never let them get the better of us. And we are the poorer for it. We conduct our actions through remote control, hearts safely guarded, safely disengaged. You cannot love from a distance. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, passed from heaven to earth, through the very fires of hell for love. If the Almighty cannot love by remote control, surely we cannot either. So we must enter into love. I know of no one who has been truly terrified while flying model aircraft. Every pilot I know has scared themselves at some point. Love is no different. Love should be terrifying. If it is not, then we have not truly entered into it.

Consider the man’s role in a romantic relationship. By the rules of the dance, he must leave his safe world and chase after something well beyond his ability to analyze or control. Someone who can easily break his heart. He could remain safely in the well-ordered (though not well-cleaned) world of the bachelor, where all variables are safely under his control. The dance calls him outside of himself, demanding from him a courageous vulnerability in his pursuit of the woman. In this, there is the whisper of danger, the tingle of excitement, and the promise of joy. It should be scary.

The woman’s role is no less scary. She too has constructed a well-ordered world, one where she knows where everything is and why, where she is safely in control. She allows someone tremendously different to invade her world, to mess up the order of things, to leave the toilet seats up. Walking through her world, he changes things even as he is changed. The dance calls her outside of herself, demanding from her the same courageous vulnerability in a much different manner; she must allow herself to be pursued and to be caught by the man. Though her steps are quite different, the dance still carries the same danger, the same excitement, the same promise of joy. This, too, should be scary.

Feminist scholar Catherine McKinnon (sp?) makes some fairly unconventional observations on the interaction between men and women. She believes that sex, even in the context of marriage, is an act of assault. Her comments have understandably caused something of a stir. Still, there is little in this world that is all the way wrong. She is right, in a way. The whole thing is quite invasive. Not just the physical act, the intertwining of spirit and heart and mind as well. Just as in a dance, or a fight, the partners must interfere deeply in each other’s worlds. So she looks at the tangled mess that our culture makes out of sex, and she sees a fight. Understandably so: a dance where neither partner cares much for the steps or for each other looks much more like a rugby scrum than a salsa. The beauty of the dance has been lost in our disregard for each other, but that does not mean that we should discard the dance.

It means that we should relearn our steps. He overcomes his trepidation, and holds out his hand for her to take. She takes his hand, and he pulls her to himself. Trust grows as they learn to anticipate the steps of the other. Then a promise, and in that promise they become each others’. He is not a trespasser, but an adventurer. She invites him into her garden, that place that was uniquely hers, and chooses to share the depths of who she is with another. He gives himself to her in his way, and she receives him, yet she gives herself to him in her own way, and he receives her. They eat of each other’s fruit together. The lovers interfere deeply in each other’s worlds, to the point of losing themselves in the other. In doing so, they become someone more amazing, more beautiful, more complete than either of them were before. They lose their lives in each other to find them together.

We confuse symmetry with sameness. There are many things in this world that are quite different, yet quite complimentary. The land receives the ocean at the shore, but the land and the ocean are not the same. There would be no lapping waves for long seaside walks if there were just water meeting more water, or land meeting more land. The man and the woman both give up their worlds for each other. They go about it in very different ways. They both shape their new world together, though in greatly different ways. That world would be the poorer for any redundancies between them. They are the reconciliation of the land and the water, and together they make the shore.

In McKinnon’s universe, we never interfere in each others’ worlds. We harvest fruit until the trees become nameless, until the fruit becomes tasteless. We carry the fruit in bushels to the gates of our own heart, and there we exchange it with others to feed our hungers. But they are never allowed inside. Nor do we enter their world. There is no place for adventure, nor for invitations. Picking fruit is passé. You would have to content yourself with one flavor, and you would have to wait for it to grow. Why nurture one tree, when you can just uproot it and plant another when it gets old? This is the price for staying safe. And as we forget about outmoded concepts of finding and being found, we lose far more than we ever bargained.

Our gates are shattered. We have replaced our private gardens with de facto public parks. Now there are paved paths and signs, but we treat the trees with contempt, their fruit with contempt. The myth has been deconstructed until all of its life is completely lost. Where there once had been magic, wood nymphs and satyrs, now there are planters, pavement and urban planning. We have chased off the magic, and we are left with little more than friction and fluid exchange. And we are much poorer for it.

We think that we are so much more sophisticated, but really all we have done is made our worlds small so that we look large in comparison. If you want to prove that there are no deer in a forest, one way of going about that is to tear down every tree in the forest that a deer could hide behind. Most likely, after tearing down all the trees, you won’t find any deer. That doesn’t mean they were never there to start with. We see ourselves as enlightened, finally free from foolish superstitions. Tearing apart the fabric of myth, we find no magic. The thing about magic is that you have to respect it. It shows up when it feels like, and inhabits holy places. If you desecrate all the holy places, you will not find it. So we who are so sophisticated, we who are determined to rid ourselves of all myth, desecrate all the places where it used to hide. We then congratulate ourselves in our self-fulfilling prophecies, scaring off all magic as we perform our various sorts of vivisection. And of course, we who were bound and determined not to find magic, find no magic. That does not mean it was never there to begin with.

How do we work backwards? Respect for the magic was the first thing we lost. In regaining the respect, we regain the magic. And there is only one magic deeper in this world than intimacy between two immortals. All magic starts with the Author of magic. As we regain our respect for Him, we learn to respect each other. We learn to revere holy places once again. And as the desecration is undone, the magic begins to return. What once was just a tree in a public park becomes a sacred grove once again. It becomes exciting to walk there once more. But along with the excitement, there is a hint of danger. It is a little scary to explore the garden. But maybe, it always should have been scary.

I’m sure Abraham had some theory on how God was going to keep His promise when he set out toward the mountain with his son. I mean, you have a bunch of impossible variables all put together. You have the child of the promise, the son through whom God will make a great nation. You have an order to take that son up to a mountain to his death. You have no explanation at all, only instructions. Father Abraham is hardly a Soren Kirkegaard. I’m sure he had some scheme about how it would all work out.

God knew Abram’s heart. He was a leader, he understood command and control. That gift was equal parts strength and weakness. The same man that led a household of hundreds through a wasteland had schemed himself out of Pharaoh’s hands and into fathering Ishmael. As a patriarch and a military commander, he doubtless had some understanding of outcomes and courses of action. The child of promise was too important for all of that. There was no scheme that would bring about the promised miracle, no human hands would be credited with this thing God had wrought. None were. Abram and Sarah conceived a child to a barren womb. But we forget so quickly.

Once God answers a prayer, the temptation is to believe that the time for faith ended with that answer. ‘God, thanks for the son, but we’ve got it from here.’ We forget that having the thing takes at least as much faith as getting the thing. They waited expectantly on God to answer their prayer, keeping their hands open and raised. When He gave a son into their hands, they doubtless wanted to close their hands around him. This is why Abraham had to take Isaac to the mountain. Learning a faith of asking, he now had to learn the faith of having. This is the ability to have a gift without it having you; the strength to hold all the things you love in open hands before God.

So, about a month ago, I got two friends back. I considered it a Christmas present. In some ways, it was an answer to a prayer. Things had started to wrong between us. Felt like God had been leading me away from them. I heard from Him, ‘you know, you’re going to have to let them go.’ I didn’t understand at the time. Maybe I didn’t want to. I considered them deep friends, and I didn‘t want to let them go. I tried to hold on, and the relationship started to be more and more painful. ‘Compliant-Nonresponsive’ all over again. I’m not going to describe the details. Suffice it to say that I did end up letting them go four months ago. I felt like God forced my hand, but that it was something that had to be done. So when I heard back from them recently, I considered it a gift from Him. As if He had given me my friends back.

But even in this miracle, there must be a point where you take the relationship to the mountain. And I am there now. So be it. They are His first. May the relationship between us take whatever form He desires. I was absent in many ways before; I will be present now. This means that I stand up for myself, that I speak in all the flavors of love (not just the nice ones,) and that I learn to be cognizant of my proper place in their lives, and their proper place in mine. This means that boundaries must be drawn. This may not go well, I know. It is hard for people who have not had boundaries to draw and maintain effective ones. It is difficult for people who have not expressed hurt to each other to learn how to do so respectfully. But this is important. I will not risk the changes God has wrought in my heart for old times’ sake. So perhaps we figure out a ‘new wineskins’ friendship. I earnestly desire that. But however this ends, I know that I am placing them into God’s hands, certainly more than ever before. And however it turns out, I will love them.

In order to have something, you must be willing to give it up. To hold on too tight is to strangle the life from the gift. Love is this way. To love a friend, you must not love them so much that you will never risk the friendship. To do so is to ensure the death of the friendship, for there will be things that need to be talked about which will bring with them that risk. I recall a movie where a general remarks on the paradox of command. ‘A general must love the army, they must love their men. But at the same time, they must be willing to order the death of the thing that he loves. He must be willing to order an attack. If he does not, more of his men will die, and they will have died for nothing.’ This is true with friendship and romantic love, too. You must be willing to risk the relationship in order to save the relationship. The difference between work and fighting is the element of risk. Anything good on this side of the fall must be fought for.

There is an ordering of things. God must come first. If He does not, than all other things are doomed to failure. Perhaps this is why God engineered risk into love. If we only had to all the things in the right order, we would think that love was our own creation. Without risk, there is no surrender, and without surrender, there is no love. The first surrender must be to God. So there is no love without risk. Just ask Jesus. He knows this better than any of us could.

I heard this at Urbana, while praying right before Communion. It was unexpected. The most beautiful thing that had ever been shared between C. and I was incomplete. When I interceded as those who had hurt her, I did not intercede against the girl who had called her devastating things. I saw it as an internal discussion, one I was not a party to. I gave quarter to an attack from the enemy, when I could have rebuked it. I was wrong not to fight for her in this.

I do not know how to say this thing. If God has given me these words, then may He give me a platform from which to say them in a language she can receive. I will wait, and pray for another miracle.

Here are those words.

‘Somewhere in your head, there is still the voice of a fourteen-year-old girl who has forgotten your name, whispering that you are still a white girl with a tan. I rebuke her. She was as wrong then as she is now. You are Latina, not because you have proved it or earned it, not because of your cross-cultural ministry or your academic work, not because of your words or your music or your clothes or anything else. You are Latina because Jesus saw fit to adorn His beautiful daughter with curly hair, tan skin, dark eyes, a passionate heart, feet that feel rhythm, and a hundred other things that bring glory to Him. You have nothing to prove. You are Latina because you are His and because that is how He loves you. Enter into the joy of the things you have done for your people, in the security that you are of your people. You are a woman who will set a people free. But that never was the price for admission. They were always your people, given to you by God, who also gave you to them, and no fourteen-year-old can ever, ever take that away.’

Today, I finished my one year task of reading all of C.S. Lewis’ books. The last book was ‘That Hideous Strength.’ God spoke to me in a way I very much did not expect. Please grant me a degree of grace here. This is me at my most real.

‘He knew that he was going to meet Jane, and something was beginning to happen to him which ought to have happened to him far earlier. That same outlook upon love which had forestalled in Jane the humility of a wife, had equally forestalled in him, during what passed for courtship, the humility of a lover…

This time at last he thought of his own clumsy importunity. And the thought would not go away. Inch by inch, all the lout and clown and clod-hopper in him was revealed to his own reluctant inspection; the course, male boor with thorny hands and hobnailed shoes and beefsteak jaw, not rushing in - for that can be carried off - but blundering, sauntering, stumping in where great lovers, knights and poets would have dared to tread. An image of Jane’s skin, so smooth that a child’s skin might make a mark on it, floated before him. How had he dared? Her driven snow, her music, her sacrosanct, the very style of her movements… how had he dared? And dared too with no sense of daring, nonchalantly, in careless stupidity! The very thoughts that crossed her face from moment to moment, all of them beyond his reach, made (had he but had the wit to see it) a hedge about her which such as he should never have had the temerity to pass. Yes, yes - of course, it was she who had allowed him to pass it: perhaps in luckless, misunderstanding pity. And he had taken blackguardly advantage of that noble error in her judgment; had behaved as if here native to that fenced garden and even its natural professor.

All this, which should have been uneasy joy, was torment to him, for it came to late. He was discovering the hedge after he had plucked the rose, and not only plucked it but torn it all to pieces and crumpled it with hot, thumb-like, greedy fingers. How had he dared?’

God, forgive me. I tried, over and over, to pick the lock on the hedge you built to protect your beloved daughter. How had I dared? How could I have thought that through some strength, or cleverness, or sleight of hand that I could trespass in that garden that You created and You have guarded? You were right to keep me out. Forgive me, Lord. Her heart is yours. Forgive me for my clumsy attempts at burglary. I will try to pick locks no more. I will ask You for the key. She is Yours first and always.

‘What could he do in such a place- where his very admiration could only be insult, his best attempts to be either grave or gay could only reveal unbridgeable misunderstanding? What he had called her coldness seemed now to be patience. Whereof the memory scalded. For he loved her now. But it was all spoiled: too late to mend matters.

Suddenly the diffused light brightened and flushed. He looked up and perceived a great lady standing by a doorway in a wall. It was not Jane, not like Jane. It was larger, almost gigantic. It was not human, though it was like a woman divinely tall, part naked, part wrapped in a flame-colored robe. Light came from it. The face was enigmatic, ruthless he thought, inhumanly beautiful. It was opening the door for him. He dare not disobey (‘surely’ he thought, ‘I must have died,’) and he went in: found himself in some place of sweet smells and bright fires, with food and wine and a rich bed.’

Jesus, if you would honor me by placing Your daughter into my hands, please teach me to love her the way You do. May I tread with reverence, respecting your artistry, yet with daring, with such valor as would fit entering into such a hallowed and mysterious and dangerous place as her heart. May I honor her with my heart, worship her with my body, and love her with my life. May I protect her and challenge her. May I love her enough to give her new life, for love brings life, and gives birth to new life. May I surround her with children, and grand-children. If You give her to me, may I give her back to You each day, for she is Yours first and always. Just as I am Yours first. This is my heart, placed in Your hands.

‘Go in obedience and you will find love. You will have no more dreams. Have children instead. Urendi Maleldil.’

When facing an in-flight emergency, the least useful question is ‘who is more to blame.’ The entire crew is bound together in their fates, regardless of who caused the problem or why. They either save the aircraft together, or they die together. If it is saved, the question of blame ceases to be important after a safe landing (except insofar as answering it can prevent future emergencies.) If the aircraft crashes, the safety board will have plenty of time to figure out who was more to blame, most likely without the assistance of the crew. Raising the question of blame in flight all but ensures that the safety board will close the question well after the answer is of any use to the crew.

Relationships are no different. ‘Who is more to blame’ is a question for divorce courts, not for a marriage. Even if the other person is 99% wrong, you are still 1% wrong. Which means that you are wrong. The wrongness of the other does nothing to mitigate your own. Anything that goes wrong in a relationship involves both people in the relationship. If we break things together, then the only way to fix them is together. I spent so much time arguing about who was more wrong. That was never the question.

The reality is that we both hurt each other. Not Proverb’s ‘honest wounds from a friend.’ Cruel, vicious wounds. Two people who value loyalty and honor above all things (save One) attacked those very things in each other. She and I both accused each other of disloyalty, dishonesty and dishonor; we named each other as lacking in courage and integrity. It is one thing to misunderstand each other. Surely there was some of that. That could be excused; two people can be well-intentioned and well-meaning and still crash into each other as their words ricochet off the walls. But it is one thing to find yourself in the crossfire between crooked souls trying to stand up straight. It is a quite different thing to fashion words into weapons and aim them at the heart of the other. Something in both of us wanted to hurt the other the way we had been hurt. Instead of being found naked and defenseless in a moment of vulnerability, we did what we had always done to keep ourselves safe. We attacked.

In a way, it was a perfect trap. Take two Christians whose spiritual resumes looked quite good on paper; two Christians who loved God as best as they could, but were both deeply proud and deeply scared. Set up a dissonance between them, where they are equally attracted to and repelled by each other. Convince each to try to fix that dissonance through their own power. Make sure that fear keeps both of them from really being honest with themselves about their own hearts. Watch as the tension grows until the situation finally explodes.

I never respected her will, when it really came down to it. I thought I had, I convinced myself that I had, I forced myself to act as if I had, but I never really had. Somewhere in the depths of my heart, I never considered her ‘no’ valid. And even if I wasn’t willing to see it, she saw it. And resented me for it. She was not wrong to do so. This was my contribution to the brokenness.

She never respected my heart. I think she thought that she did. I think she thought as if she was acting as if she did. But she never did. Somewhere in the depths of her heart, she always resented my feelings for her. She was always wrong to do so. Just as she had the right to her will, I had a right to my heart. I don’t think she was willing to see it, but somewhere deep I saw it. And I resented her for it. I was not wrong to do so. This was her contribution to the brokenness.

My disrespect and her disrespect fed off each other. She blamed my heart for my disrespect of her will, just as I blamed her will for her disrespect of my heart. The more I resented her will for disrespecting my heart, the more I disrespected her will. And the more she resented my heart for disrespecting her will. The broken chord was complete. The only resolution I could see was a change in her will, and I think perhaps that was why I tried so hard to be friends with her. The only resolution she could see was a change in my heart, which is why she preconditioned our friendship on my not being attracted to her. So I killed my heart in the insane hope that in doing so she would learn not to resent it. But my heart did not stay dead. Two months into waiting for a phone call that was promised but never came, it returned with a vengeance. All the pain, the heartache, and the resentment that I had been burying for months, years really, declared thatit would be buried no longer. All the words that should have been said long ago were said all at once, and the already tenuous relationship shattered into a million pieces. Her counter-attack came months later. The first time she was truly honest with herself, and with me, she told me in no uncertain terms the depths of her resentment toward me. The trap had worked perfectly. Two Christians in very good standing went for each other’s throats. What could have been a mockery of disunity had become a case study in it.

Pride seems to be the enemy’s weapon of choice against those in Christian leadership. Few in ministry will risk their influence or livelihood through open rebellion. Self-will provides us the appearance of righteousness so important to public perceptions, while leaving us wide open to temptation. It is a root sin; a gateway sin leading to all kinds of unrighteousness. Unless God lances the wound, it will burst at a time of the enemy’s choosing, usually one disastrous to our witness and our ministry. This is a lesson we should be all too familiar with.

Pride has a special seduction for those who are highly gifted and for those who have been deeply wounded. It whispers ‘you can be safe if you trust in your own power.’ Those who have been hurt desire safety more than most, those who are gifted trust their own power more than most. It tells you that you can fix things if you try hard enough. I have found that I have no power to work miracles; a miracle is what it would have taken to fix things between her and I. Pride cut me off from the source of miracles. Not only that, it blinded me to my contribution to the problem. Pride always looks outside for problems, never inwards. I tried so hard to fix her, but I never fixed myself. I never started with the plank in my own eye. Just as the Spirit is the guarantor of salvation, pride is the guarantor of brokenness. The Spirit promises that He will complete the work started in us. Pride ensures that no work is done in us. Under its watch, all the things that are broken will stay broken. And so it was with us.

We both tried to convince ourselves to feel the way we knew we should feel. I knew that I should respect her will, but simultaneously I refused to believe that two Christians could not manage to have some sort of positive interaction. So through my own strength and my own mind, I set out to do both. I felt as if she was saying ‘I will resent you if you like me. You must kill your heart if you want to talk to me.’ I accepted that rule, ostensibly in the hope of being friends. I found the topics of relationships, marriage, children, and love unappetizing. But I was never honest with myself. I killed my heart, over and over, but it kept coming back up and poisoning the interaction. And it kept hoping that she would change her mind, that she would magically figure out I was a good guy if I kept putting up with abuse. So the tension built.

Perhaps it was the same from her side. Perhaps she knew that there wasn’t a good reason to resent my heart, but something in her heart kept pushing her to hating mine. So she decided to fix it through her own power, to choose to feel the way toward me that she decided she should feel. Perhaps, just as it was with me, whatever it is in her heart kept bubbling back up and poisoning the relationship. During the best conversation we ever had, she promised that she would call soon about the dynamics between her and I. She told me that she still wanted to be friends. I think she may have had the intention of keeping that promise, but it was a promise borne of duty, not Phileos. Perhaps she knew that was what she was supposed to do in that circumstance, what she would have wanted to do if her heart was doing what she told it that it should do. But it came back up, convincing her not to call, to avoid, to run. And the tension built.

Humility is the constant companion of love. It tells us that we need love, that we owe love to others, it teaches us to be open to love. In the same way, fear is the constant companion of pride. Fear whispers that we cannot need anything from anyone, that we cannot owe them anything, it teaches us to close ourselves off from love. Humility teaches us to be broken. Fear prevents us from being broken. In order to dismantle pride, you must destroy the fear that drives it. In order to do that, you must find the courage to face your own heart.

Both of us were afraid to face ourselves. For me, I was terrified to face my heart, because I was terrified of being hurt. I knew that if I faced my heart, it would tell me that I loved her. And if it told me that, then she would hate me for it, and I would be deeply wounded again. She had never carried that well, never done anything to be gentle or to honor my heart. To love her was to be told that my heart was disgusting and hateful, so I decided not to love. I decided to hide my heart, bury it because I was afraid.

I think she may have been afraid too. I don’t believe that things were entirely simple for her. It seemed there was a part of her who liked me, and another part that hated that part for liking me. Something in her knew that it was illegitimate to hate me for that, so she made the rule that I could never like her. Therefore, her hating my heart would then be my fault, and hence legitimate. If she were to face her heart, she would have to face two terrifying things: she was neither in total control of the situation nor in total control of her own feelings. So it was safer to run, to hide and to bury. But fears do not stay peacefully in the grave. They haunt our waking lives. The only way to undo them is to exhume them. Both her and I were terrified to face ourselves, so we never really faced each other. I wonder if either of us really had faces to begin with.

We were cruel to each other over and over. God mourns for that; He mourns for the way His son treated His daughter, He mourns for the way His daughter treated His son. There is no balance in brokenness, no balance in the fall. We are hurt, and we hurt others, over and over again. We are the slaves and the slave owners, both at once. Brokenness cannot be balanced. It must be overthrown.

I am a part of the brokenness. I was the son of God who hurt His beloved daughter. The fact that she hurt me does nothing at all to mitigate my guilt. So I will own it, and I will lay it down at the foot of the Cross. I ask Him to forgive me for hurting His beloved daughter. I ask His forgiveness for my disrespect toward her, for the way that I resented the will He gave her. I ask His forgiveness for my failure to confront her lovingly when she treated me with disrespect. I ask His forgiveness for responding to her with rage. I ask forgiveness for my tremendous pride, for my tremendous fear, for my unwillingness to yield her into His hands. I was so concerned with outcomes. Jesus, teach me obedience instead. God, teach me to love her the way that You do. Whether or not I ever get to express it on this side of eternity.

May His grace and mercy flow over this. Where there was disrespect, may He sow honor; where there was resentment, compassion; where there was pride, brokenness; where there was fear, love. May what is a case study in disunity become a mockery of disunity. May we both find our faces, so that we can be real with God and with others. May the God who does the impossible work a miracle here. May the God who reconciles the irreconcilable reconcile the two of us. I ask all of these things in the Name of Jesus Christ, the Name above all Names, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. May that same sacred Blood that flows through her veins and mine cover all of our sins toward each other.

It is not really fair, I am realizing, to resent someone for failing to provide something that they were never capable of providing in the first place. Even if they did promise it. I am beginning to understand the depths of bitterness in my own heart. Remarkably, I am finding much of my driven-ness wrapped around that bitterness. Alexander goes to Asia to find his home. Finding none, he drives harder and further. When counseled to return to Macedonia, he unleashes his rage on those who advise him to return ‘home.’ These men truly consider themselves to have a home. He does not. For them to ask him to return to a place named home is an invitation to a mockery.

‘We’re all the home that’s offered here.’ As much as I hate to quote a Sarah McLachlan song, it seems to fit. There was something deep, something that was never at peace with the campus ministry I was involved during grad school. I think I have finally found words to wrap around it. There has always been a sense somewhere of the accusation ‘we all fit, why can’t you?’ Like there was some set of rules in a given place, and others knew them instinctively. Not just that. There was a perception of a sense of belonging, a sense others had that I could not really ever find. Like they had finally found what they were looking for. Like they were home.

There was always a mad passion in my journey. One that told me in every new place that I haven’t quite found the object of my search, one that pushed me over the every next mountain range to find it. (I know that I’m supposed to like Bono, being a young, socially conscious, IV-trained Christian and all, but I really couldn’t bring myself to say ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.’ Oops. I guess I just did.)
That search drove me to my undergraduate institution (emphasis on institution,) to grad school, to pilot training, and to my current job. Don’t get me wrong, I do not regret any of those things. They are all tremendous blessings and God used those places to shape who I am in Him. But it’s hard to understand a quest when you never quite understood the question.

There is something about humanity that causes our heart and our head to constantly miscommunicate. Our hearts drive us on, and we think we know what it wants. We try to get that thing, but our heart rejects it. Perhaps this is why we always want what we can’t have. A part of us believes that the answer to that driving question must be in that place that is just beyond our reach. After all, we have found that it is not in any of the things within reach. The author of Ecclesiastes can tell us that much. But he is no Gautama. He does not tell us to give up on desire. Lewis tells us that desire will lead us home, if we follow it where it leads. He is right, both about the journey and its object. Home is what we really want.

There is no home to be found here. There was once a home here, once. We chose exile, and exiles we have been ever since. But we are still royalty in exile. We were meant for so much more, and our heart remembers. Hope is a hard place, though. Comfort and desire rarely co-exist. To want at all is to sacrifice safety and stability. You must move in order to find the object of your desire, and very often, to move is to fail or to get hurt. But the alternative is worse. Consider Eldridge’s beached sea lion, making his home in a mud hole. We can end the exile by setting here, but if we are exiled royalty, we end our claim to royalty when we end our exile.

Refugee camps are as good as it gets on this side of eternity. We sojourn with others on their way home. The camps are not home, but they are very different from the slums we built in the wasteland. While without many of the amenities of those slums, the camps are populated by those who will populate the Heavenly city. But we aren’t there yet.

Sometimes you get frustrated with each other in the refugee camps. Tent flaps do little to keep out the snoring coming from the next tent. You get annoyed with the people in line for the latrine. You may not all even see eye to eye on which direction move the camp. But we should not expect these tents to be home. Our desire would be impoverished if we were satisfied in this place. So that mad driving passion wasn’t necessarily bad. It was just confused as to what it really wanted.

Perhaps there were other places where I was looking for a home, other people I asked for something they could never provide. There was a part of me, I believe, that was looking for a woman who would be home. I think I saw it very wrong. I will not find what I am looking for in a person here any more than I will find it in a tent in a refugee camp. But I can provide a tent for a family, and I can keep that tent secure. She can make that tent more like the home that we are returning to. And together we can return to our real home.

‘As Christ Loves the Church.’ This is the way that a man is supposed to love a woman. I think I understand this far better than I ever had. It ended up being far more true than I expected. If one wants to stay safe, I suppose they should not choose a faith whose founder dies a horrible death and then invites us to follow.

There once was a story of transposition between C. and I. What happened there was significant, too important to be shared on-line. Suffice it to say that I became the people who hurt her. At least some of them.

I understand why she hated me so much. I understand the depths of her capacity to hate. I became those people, the people who had hurt her so deeply. Who had denied her a home. So she hurt me, intentionally and cruelly. The same way she had been hurt. I’m sure she found reasons. She may have even believed it was for my own good. I don’t know. All I know is that I fought for her, I became the people that hurt her, and she hurt me the way that they hurt her.

So perhaps this is a reflection of the One True Myth. Like seasons or birth or gods of corn. Like anything else. I’m not sure how it ends.

I hope with all my heart that it ends like that One True Myth. In resurrection, freedom and spring. Where everything will be made new again. Whatever that looks like. I will forget what I knew of old C. I hope with all my heart I get to meet new C. Again for the first time.

The funny thing about an undeclared war is that people end up on sides without even knowing it. Without choosing or even being informed of it, the friends of the combatants find themselves drafted into the conflict. I recall something my friend S. said about C. ‘You know, I really don’t like her. I don’t think she’s a good person.’ My response was something to the effect of ‘that’s because you’re my friend. If you were her friend I imagine you’d think those things about me.’ So the enemy of my friend is my enemy. And the friend of my enemy is my enemy.

I think I now understand something about the rage that Pastor’s Kids feel toward God. Your father, the pastor, is far from perfect. In the bloody wars of adolescence, he hurts you badly. Perhaps rightly or wrongly from some fictional objective viewpoint, but certainly wrongly from your perspective. So the battle lines are drawn. You see how deeply your parent wounds you, but everyone in the church keeps talking about how great he is. The friend of my enemy is my enemy. They all side with him, whether or not they are aware of the war. And if the people of God side with your dad, then God sides with your dad. There is nowhere that you can go. So Tory Amos and Nietzsche and however many others set out on their war to tear the whole thing down around them.

The friend of my enemy is my enemy. Unless there is a deeper loyalty than friendship. If there were such a thing, then the friend of my enemy could be my friend. They could be a friend to both of us at once. A friend to one side would cheer for their side as the blows were exchanged. A friend to both sides would mourn as their friends continued to wound each other. They would desire an end to the war.

Joshua was preparing to attack Jericho, when he sees a man with sword drawn. He asks him, ‘whose side are you on?’ The man answers ‘I am on the Lord’s side.’ If God does not pick sides as His Chosen People set out to conquer the promised land on His orders, than how could I have imagined that He would have chosen sides in a conflict between two of His beloved children? He never did. He mourned for what she and I did to each other. He recognized my pain, legitimated it, and He heals it. He desires an end to the war.

Here at Urbana, I am surrounded by a distinct impression of her diffused influence. This is her world, these are her friends, these are her ministries. This is her legacy. I am certain that the stock of C. in this place is quite higher than my own. I have to say that is not the most comfortable of experiences. The friend of my enemy is my enemy, and her accusations echo off the walls of this place. All twenty thousand pointing fingers tell me to leave it alone. There are two sides, and I know which one they will choose. Maybe, though, there is a better side to choose than hers or mine.

It was another function of my pride, I think, when I chose not to talk to mutual friends about the story. She accused me of using her friends against her. I was so determined to disprove that accusation through my own strength that I determined that no mutual friend who did not already know about the story would find out about it. Doing so, I cut myself off from much wise council. This was foolish. I reject her accusation wholeheartedly. It was entirely appropriate to discuss this with my mentors. The fact that they know her does nothing to change that.

I didn’t want a trial by friends. I stopped wanting that months ago. I didn’t want to be right, I didn’t care about being right. I didn’t want them to choose my side, I didn’t want them to side with me against her, I didn’t need to hear that I was a great guy and she was cruel to me. Being right is cold solace for one who desires reconciliation. In telling the story, I saw something far more valuable in my friends’ eyes. I found that I was okay. That it was understandable to feel the way I did. That I wasn’t crazy to feel what I felt.

I guess that I had always thought that her para-church ministry sided with her. They didn’t. There were never any sides. I think back to the mistake of Palm Sunday. The city of Jerusalem asks God to side with them against the Romans. On that day, Hosanna meant ‘God, take my side,’ not ’Lord, save.’ When He fails to do so, they have no further use for Him. They were more wrong than they could have imagined. His side was better than their own, better than the Roman side, better than all sides. I want to be Joshua at Jericho. I am tired of my side. I want to be on the Lord’s side.

Really, they wanted what I wanted. Not all of it, I guess. But part of it. They wanted reconciliation. I wanted reconciliation. Whatever other stories are happening here, whatever God is or is not doing, I know with all my heart that He desires reconciliation between His children. So, in prayer and accountability, I pursued reconciliation. Never heard anything back. Still, my prayers go with her. May we be reconciled. I believe with all my heart that the Blood of Christ can take enemies and turn them into family. Amongst all the miracles that I am praying for, I believe that one is the closest to the center of His will.

[Note: Before writing this post, I sent an email to someone from undergrad who I would have once considered an enemy. It seems like forever ago, and it was almost a decade, but I don’t think I would have ever called that person a friend. God put it on my heart to make things right with them. I sent them an email, asking for reconciliation, and apologizing if I had hurt them. I just got an email back from them, saying the same things back. Praise God. I do not think that I could have imagined being reconciled to that person eight years ago. But I was quite a different person eight years ago. There were never any sides. Praise God that through His Blood enemies can become family. May He bless my sibling greatly.]

Learning to fly is one of the most fascinating experiences I know of. Imagine being transported back to infancy while keeping your mind and will intact. Knowing what you know now, think of how it would feel to learn to walk all over again. Pilot training, of course, is hardly the only professional school out there. Law School is hard, I have no doubt. But it is different. You can take your pre-law degree and apply it directly to Torts class. Though much more intense, in some way it is still more of the same. It is not that degrees or academic work cannot be applied to pilot training. Take our class of eager, well-educated aspiring walkers. One man has a degree in developmental psych. He understands something of the mechanics of his own brain as he learns to walk; he gains a unique perspective on the endeavor, but learning to walk is still fundamentally different from reading a textbook on cognition. So the Aeronautical Engineer understands something about why he needs to add more power as he flies slower and the Art major understands something about making the landing picture ‘look right.’ In order to learn to fly, though, both the engineer and the artist have to step entirely outside of their comfort zone when they strap themselves into an aircraft.

The uniqueness of pilot training is captured in the Initial Solo. After flying six or seven rides with an instructor, the student pilot takes the aircraft up on their own. It is a tremendously significant ride, but you really don’t learn much airmanship on your solo. Instead, you discover how much you already know. And how much you still don’t know. It has something to do with the learning process, I think. You try something. It doesn’t work out. You think about what went wrong, your instructor demonstrates how do to it right, and you try it again until your instructor is satisfied. He knows you know how to perform the maneuver, and he signs you off on it. So you know how to do it, but you don’t really know that you know until you go and do it yourself. This is why we solo. Your instructor knows you can fly, but you don’t really know yourself until you go out and do it.

There is something of an Instructor Pilot in God, I think. He keeps bringing us back to the same situation until we follow His instruction. He demonstrates through the Word (God-breathed or God breathing,) and He asks us to repeat the maneuver until we get it right. Once He is satisfied that we know what to do, He places us back in the situation one more time to prove to ourselves that we know what to do. He signs us off, puts His wings on our chest, and gives us the keys.

So at Urbana, I find myself back in Pensacola. Longest ride back home in recent memory. I swear I heard Him talking, but I could not respond. I remember being frozen, completely unable to act. I hear the call, and my hand is frozen to my sword. The pastor was right. My other friends were right. Be a man. Act. But I could not. Fell on my face, crashed and burned. I never ended up figuring it out. Not that I wrote it off, far from it. I gave it up. ‘I don’t know the answer, God, but You do. And I’m okay with that.’

I guess I had thought that was the end of that lesson. After all, He never really brought it back up. Until now. And I start to realize how much I have learned.

He shows me one critical fact. There is a difference between being reconciled and having all my deep prayers answered. This is a possibility I had not really considered: a reconciliation without an ending. A world where we were not best buddies, but one where we were okay with each other. Where we say all the things that needed to be said and never were, where we face each other with honor and answer each other with respect. Where I keep praying, and I respect her will and her ‘no.’ Where she respects my prayers and my heart, where we live our entirely separate lives. A world with or without terms of further interaction, but a world at peace.

There is something in me that wanted to win. The ‘hasta el fin’ part, I think. That part of me couldn’t quite wrap itself around the concept of a ‘peace with honor.’ It wouldn’t have been the first time that phrase was used to describe ‘giving up.‘ It doesn’t have to mean that though. Reconciliation does not have to mean the end of the story. Only the end of a chapter.

Desire will lead us home. I still believe that. I will not stop praying halfway. So in any world, reconciled or not, I will keep praying until He answers my original prayer, ‘change my heart or change hers.’ I will not act on that prayer until He answers it, clearly and unequivocally. But I have another prayer now. Reconciliation. I know that much is right, at least. I do not know if He desires that C. and I somehow end up together. But I do know, for absolutely certain, that He desires reconciliation between His children, C. and I included. Therefore, I will pursue reconciliation, insofar as it concerns me and insofar as I am able. If that involves action, so be it. I am accountable. I will pursue her still in my prayers, but I will work to end the war between us.

I have always been far too concerned with outcomes. I suppose it is only natural, given my profession. Analyze the situation. Take the proper action. Anticipate courses of action, choose the most probable effective path. But this is not the math of God. Outcomes were never the question. Only obedience. I was never held to account for how things turned out, only for how well I followed Him. This was the lesson from Pensacola. Quit running the numbers, just do what He says. Let Him be God. He runs the universe, not me.

Sometimes He takes us back to that exact same place where we failed. He teaches us, surrounds us with support, speaks to us a bit more clearly, and then gives us another shot at it. So in the middle of Urbana, I find myself back at Pensacola. Talking to a spiritual mentor who understood the situation, I felt as if God was telling me to actively seek reconciliation with her. I heard it in the messages, in the praise songs, the same nudge from five different directions. I didn’t even want to hear it. I didn’t want to go back to Pensacola. I was fine with my prayers, fine not talking to her, okay with waiting on a miracle. I was comfortable. I did not want to be moved. The same counter-argument remained. If I tried talk to her, she would most likely hate me, and if she says anything at all, it would be just be more long knives and accusations. But I had learned something from Pensacola: none of that mattered at all.

I am not responsible for her actions, nor for her heart, nor for her feelings toward me. None of those things are my responsibility, and none of them change my duty to seek reconciliation insofar as I am able. Realizing this, I seek wisdom. I feel as if I should write her, so I pray, ‘God, if this thought is from you, bring it back to me tomorrow. If not, may I forget it tonight. I yield it to you.’ I pray that one day, the thought comes to me the next day. And I pray it again that day, and it comes to me the third day. That day, I met with another mutual mentor, a man I respect deeply. By this time, I am willing to speak to him openly about the story, asking his advice. I tell him the situation, and that I am planning on messaging her, asking his advice. He concurs. So I send it. Please note that I am not citing cosmic, Gideon-style coincidences to justify my actions, clearly there were none of those here. But I do not need a Gideon-style sign to tell me to do what is already in Scripture. There is nothing about getting the girl you want in Scripture. There is lots about a believer’s duty to reconcile, insofar as they can. The question was never so much the authorization, but finding the strength. I found it in my mentors and I found it over those three days. I thank Him for providing me the strength and support to do what I should have done months ago. I’m glad I got to give it a second shot.

I asked her if she would honor me by meeting with me for reconciliation before we took communion on Sunday. I am not sure if she was even there. I never heard back. But that was never the point. Sending the message, I felt as if I had done what I was supposed to do. I felt like I had returned to Pensacola, and done things right. Initial solo with the lessons He had taught me. There’s no way I would have realized how much I learned without being placed in a position where I had to use that knowledge. I obeyed, I let Him sort out the consequences. I have no idea whether she even received the message, nor how she took it if she did. You know what? It doesn’t matter. That is between her and God. All I know is that I did as I was told. That’s really all I needed to know, anyways. Well, I guess I know one other thing. I took Communion that Sunday with a clean conscience.