Excuse Me, But Your Geek is Showing

One time I had a dream about a squirrel.  It was a giant squirrel and we were wrestling.  I was watching the dream in the third person, as if it was happening on a tv screen and the squirrel and I were wrestling in front of an oak tree surrounded by a low brick wall.  The bricks in the wall looked like bricks do in the Super Mario Brothers' games, all red with white flecks and yellow mortar.  In each corner of the screen were two power meters, one for each of us.  As we wrestled and completed moves against each other, our meters would go down little by little.  Eventually one of us would bottom out and the round would be over.  We would sit on the brick wall under the oak tree and discuss things in Romanian while we rested.  I don't know what we talked about, as at that time I only spoke a few words in that language, so I couldn't follow what was being said by the character that was me--or the squirrel for that matter.  And after a few minutes, we'd get back up and start in on the next match.  I think I went three matches before I woke up.  I don't remember the score.

I tell that dream for two reasons.  The first one is that its one of my favorite dreams.  Every now and then I have a dream so vivid and telling I've never forgotten it.  I'm not sure where all the elements came from (especially the giant squirrel!), but I had just started to study Romanian and I always figured it was some sort of mental game my brain was playing.  Or maybe I just played too many video games as a child.

The second reason is that I was reminded of the power meters this evening.  I was laying on the couch with my wife, telling her about some day dreams I had when I was a kid.  I think she was impressed by the amount of detail I had put into this story and wondered why I had never told her about any of it before.  But she fails to understand how much time I spent walking to school with nothing else to think about and how slightly embarressed I am at having made up such a make believe world in junior high and even into high school.  I don't think cool people with cool things to occupy themselves have such worlds in their heads.  I've always wished I was cool.

But I digress.  She was so impressed by the story that she began to encourage me to write it down.  I assured her that would be pointless, for as much detail as I was telling her, it was still missing some major features, such as an actual plot.  "No," she said, I must write it down.  And then she began to tell me all sorts of nice things about myself that I can only hope are true.  And that little power meter in the corner of my life?  It started filling up.  Its a little unsettling sitting on the couch with your wife, listening to her say nice things about you and suddenly seeing your "hit point" meter getting fuller just abover her right ear.  It makes you wonder if maybe you shouldn't have had that last piece of pizza after all.  I don't think she noticed me staring at it.

I think we all need somebody like my wife in our lives.  Someone who plays the role of the fairies in Zelda, or the green and white mushroom in Super Mario Brothers.  Someone who speaks into our lives the truth of what could be there, what actually *is* there, lying under the surface, sometimes so deep we don't even see it ourselves.  Someone to give us just a few more minutes to make those final few blows on the boss at the end of the level.

I'm not ready to write a book yet.  I think I need to find a few more bonus levels first before I have enough gold coins to buy a plot.  But until then I will continue to wrestle squirrels under oak trees, knowing that no matter how many times he gets me in a choke hold there's a 1-up waiting for me at home.

A Rock and a Hard Place

I'm at home.  And by that, I actually mean my parents' home, but it seems that I still refer to it as my home despite not living here for thirteen years.  I know I'm home for several reasons beyond the more obvious ones (like looking around me and seeing my parents' house).  For instance, there's a bottomless pot of homemade apple spice tea sitting on the stove.  Mom's been making it at Christmas time for nearly my whole life and I've never had anything like it anywhere else.  I think mom and I are the only ones that drink it, which might be why the pot seems to be bottomless, but it still means I'm home.  My dad is sleeping in the chair on the other side of the room.  Sometime in the decade since I've left he's given up the charade of "watching tv" and doesn't bother holding the remote or even turning on the television.  And there's a pile of theology books sitting on the coffee table.

I always pick up one of those books soon after arriving and start reading, trying to get a gauge on what's interesting my dad at the moment.  This year it was a small book on Calvinism.  I skimmed the first few chapters and then quit after two more.  It was the same old calvinistic arguments that I don't really follow and which sound cold and heartless.  The calvinistic god, as far as I can tell, is a tyrant.  And at the end of time, there is a fiery lake that forever stands as a monument to his selfish tyranny.

I am aware that I just made a lot of readers angry just now.  It was unfair, really, to what calvinist really believe.  Personally, I hate it when I read stuff like that myself.  Calvinists don't really believe that about God, just the reverse actually.  When they read of his ultimate sovereignty, his control over all creation, his mysterious reasons for judging the lost, his equally mysterious decision to choose some of us for salvation, they kneel down in worship.  But I can't.  The god they paint doesn't seem like the kind of god I *want* to worship.  And I'm a firm believer in the idea that God *wants* my worship.

Opposed to these theological ideas is Armenianism.  I don't like their view of God either.  They give all the responsibility of salvation to us--it is our responsibility to choose to accept God's gift.  But here's the problem.  God doesn't seem to be trying very hard to win over those lost souls.  And there's lots of people who've never even heard of the offer.  So, in the Armenian view of the universe, Hell stands as a monument to God's failure.  Of his inability to win over man's heart.  And I'm also a firm believer that Love never fails.

So that's where I've been the last few days.  Wandering in the no-man's-land between two opposing theological viewpoints, wondering how to resolve them.  I've been here before.  Last christmas, I believe.  And as I study and ponder and pray, I find myself challenging things I wonder if I have any right to challenge.  It's a weird feeling to discover that you don't actually agree with the weight of history--at least the part of history you're familiar with.  Here's the thing though.  God is God, no matter what we say about him.  And everything we say about him is going to be lacking somehow.  We can't even summarize each other with bullet points, why would we think we could do it about God?  But that's the point of knowing someone.  You never really actually know them, you just know more than you did yesterday.

So for now I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  Maybe then I'll know more about who God *is* rather than who he *isn't*.

Through the Looking Glass

He's a tiny boy, not even four feet even at eleven years old. He loves to climb trees. Once up inside one, he's hard to get down. When he's up there, he's in his own world and you might as well try to coax a whale out of the ocean. His dark skin and blue eyes captures your gaze and holds it as his face lights up into a smile that warms the heart and makes you feel like your eleven again. If you're lucky.

His name is Chadwin. We all knew it. It takes a special kid to be known by every member of the staff, and Chadwin is a special kid. Chadwin's counselor was more tired at the end of the week than the other counselors. The other counselors on his team were more tired than the counselors on the other teams. And we were all a little more tired at the end of that week than we were the others (though admitedly, Chadwin wasn't the only reason for that!).

The thing about Chadwin that made him kind of hard to deal with was that you never really knew where you stood with him. One minute you and he would be best buddies. He'd come over to you at lunch, give you a little side hug, laugh at a joke and go skipping off in that happy-go-lucky way that little boys have and we're all a little jealous of. Then you'd pass him in the hallway shortly after that and he'd look up at you with disgust and say, 'You. I don't like you.'.

I could never figure him out. But fortunatley for me, and probably for Chadwin, the continual love and admiration of an eleven year old boy doesn't make or break my day. Especially in his case, when I knew he'd be giving me another high five by that evening.

Chadwin face as he looked at me that day in the hallway--the face full of disgust, not the other one--kept popping into my head today. It occurred to me that maybe I was looking into a mirror of sorts. Except that on the flip side of the reflection, Chadwin's face was my own and I was seeing it through God's eyes.

How often have I joyfully climbed into the tree that God has led me to, only to adamantly refuse to come down no matter what? How many times have I seen God from across the field and run to greet him, only to rue the day we met later on when I don't get seconds at dinner?

A lot of times, let me tell you.

Fortunatley for God--and forme--the continual love and admiration of a thirty three year old boy doesn't make or break his day. And he just goes about his business, knowing that I'll be back.

And he's right.

The Greatest of These

Love is patient, love is kind. Love is a whole mess of other things that are spelled out pretty clearly in one short chapter in a letter to the Corinthians. I've been fascinated by the concept of Love since I was in college. John says that God *is* love. That's a pretty big statement about God and love and it confounds and amazes me whenever I give it a good thinking. A friend of mine once said the thing he likes most about God is that he's powerful. It makes him happy to know that God could take anyone or anything in a fist fight. But power is just one of God's traits--his defining feature, the one that sums him up in one word is Love.

Lately I've been pondering what else John says about Love. He says that we don't really just love God, we only love him because he first loved us. Now that's a powerful statement about how we learn love. I don't think we're born knowing how to love. After all, the loving thing to do would be to let poor mom have a decent night's rest and not wake her up every two hours. Instead it has to be shown to us. I'm not sure I believe that we'd even understand it intellectually until we'd experienced it personally.

I'm reminded of the times when I just didn't get something until I actually saw it in action. For a long time I strugged with Calvinism and the doctrine of predestination. The details aren't really that important, but suffice it to say that I just didn't see how that doctrine could be correct simply because I'd never met someone who followed it and wasn't kind of a jerk. How can you just not care that people are going to Hell in the carpool lane just because God didn't choose them? Then I read a pamphlet about the doctrine that was written by someone who actually seemed like a nice person. And even though nothing intellectual changed in my understanding about the topic, I was suddenly able to belive it. (Someday maybe I'll write about what I think now).

For the last two weeks, my wife and I have been helping to run summer camps in South Africa for kids from the townships and squatter camps. Our goal is to show the kids the hope and love found in God. These kinds of short term projects are sometimes hard to justify in my mind: the thousands of dollars spent, the time given up, if nothing else the ridiculously long time spent in a confining, uncomfortable airplane seat. But when you realize that the only way to teach someone about the love of God is to *show* it to them, the budget starts to balance. After all, the flight from heaven is longer, I'm sure, than the flight from San Francisco and an entire childhood lived through makes the jetlag look like nothing. And that's just God coming here. It's not even the part where he shows us what love really is: giving up your life for another.

So what is Love? I'd define it for you, but you won't get it. I'd show you if I could, but even then it would just be a glimpse of what love really is. You must experience it for yourself. And you can.