Late Summer Love

Sometimes pictures speak louder than words... so here are some pictures from the last month of summer.

Forgotten Letters

Sometimes life hits you right between the eyes with incredibly beautiful moments: moments you didn't foresee and couldn't have predicted even if you tried.  Today I had one of those moments.  I was going through the piles of stuff in my room, trying to get some semblance of order, when I came across a bag of letters from my Chrysalis flight.  For those of you who din't know, when I was still in high school, I went on a little weekend retreat called Chrysalis.  They have all kinds of activities for you to experience, (spoiler alert for those who haven't done one!) one of which is getting letters and cards from people that care about you and know what you are experiencing over the course of the weekend.  I decided to go through the bag and throw away the cards from people I didn't know or didn't remember.  I started in.  I read letters from high school friends, some of which I still see and talk to occasionally, and some that I regrettably haven't heard from in a while.  I found a letter from a high school teacher I had that wasn't my favorite in the classroom, but she wrote me a beautiful letter that changed my opinion of her.  I reread the cards from my siblings and from people I didn't even know.  Then I came to it.  The letter I wasn't expecting, not even in the slightest.  The letter from my mom's mother; my Grandma Betty.  It was marked as written in 2005... a year or so before she died.  I carefully opened it, not in the slightest prepared for what I would read.  It was the most beautiful, heartfelt letter I think I have ever received, and I had forgotten it even existed.  She told me how much she loved me and how proud she was of me, and I instantly broke down.  It was one of those moments that just jumps out at you, and all you can do is lift your empty hands and let it happen.

I was incredibly touched today to find a rare gem of love and encouragement on the brink of an unsure season of my life.  I felt so deeply loved, even though the gap of death and time, from someone that meant a lot to me.  Chrysalis wasn't a defining weekend in my life and it isn't one of my fondest memories, but I know God worked on me then and is working on me now, even though an old letter that I had forgotten about.

I want to encourage you to tell the people you love that you love them, and often.  If you can't say it outright, then write them a letter.  It can mean so much more than what you ever intended.

Love this!

For those of you who don't know who Andrew Peterson is, let me just say that he is one of my favorite musicians ever.  He has an incredible mastery over thoughts and words that I think is very rare and beautiful.  He blogged recently about his thoughts on Harry Potter and Christianity, and it's a post I think everyone, fan or not, should read.

Harry Potter, Jesus, and Me

Altar

Today, as I'm sitting in the Christ in Youth offices, one thought has struck me.  Five weeks.  Five weeks left here in Joplin.  Five weeks to spend time with my event staff team and family, and five more weeks until I finally get to embrace Dustin.  Five more weeks until I go back to live at home for a few months.  Five more weeks until concrete wedding details have to start emerging.  Five more weeks until I need to find a way to make money.

The thought is a bit overwhelming.

The thing is, time goes so fast here.  When you are busy going from event to event, sometimes working eighteen hours a day, a summer flies by.  It eventually becomes just a blip on the timeline of your life; a series of fond memories that are the distant past.

I'm not ready for the next few weeks to become a checklist or a finish line.  I desperately want to see Dustin and my family, yes, but I don't want to miss what God has for me in this moment.  Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest, professor, and theologian, wrote one of my favorite books ever entitled An Altar in the World.  In this book, she describes the manner in which Biblical heroes encountered moments in which the Living God reached out to them.  Many times, they encountered the sacred in the everyday: a dream, a whisper, a bush.

The problem is the everyday is simple: we are used to it.  After we notice the gently swaying willow tree outside our window, we forget it exists.  We create routines and start to mechanically plow through our day.  I wonder how many times God is waiting in the gentle rain, only to have me brush right past?

I want to be present in the moment...I want to encounter the living and active God in the everyday and see the sacred in the mundane.  This is my prayer for the rest of the summer, and really, for this whole season of life.

On Goodbyes at the Belltower

(Preface: Half of this post was written pre-graduation and half was written post-graduation...  just fyi so you aren't confused)


Well, that's it.  I just submitted the last paper of my college career.  I thought that I would be excited to move into the few days before graduation where I have no responsibilities and can enjoy every last moment of my Belmont experience, but I admit that I am sad.  Most every class I have taken since switching into the school of religion has challenged me more than I expected, but I have learned such an incredible amount.  At this point, at the end of my assignments and required books and reflections and research, I no longer have my professors to guide me.  If I want to learn and continue to push myself, then I am solely responsible.  

I also admit that I was hesitant to start a blog post about graduation.  I mean, how do you sum up your college experience?  How do I put my deep and complex feelings into words?  How do I describe the life-changing relationships I have formed?  How do I reflect on how I have changed as a person at the hands of my professors and peers?  I am feeling the profound failure of my words to portray what I feel.  As John Ames says in the novel Gilead, "I felt the poverty of my remarks."  I will do my best.

In these past four years, I feel that I have grown into my skin in a lot of different ways.  I have grown up.  I am on the road to a beautiful and exciting marriage to my high school sweetheart, Dustin, that was largely a big, looming question mark when we both left for college.  Although separated by distance, we have grown together through the last four years and now will be embarking on a new journey into married life.

I have learned where my greatest interests lie.  First I thought it was music, then worship leading.  Then, I took the step into the new land of theological studies and found exactly what I was looking for.  It was like my passion was there all along, waiting for me to discover it so it could blossom into just what I needed.  In studying religion, I have found a deep desire to learn more about theology and churches, about women in ministry, about popular culture and the arts and their bridges back and forth to faith.  I have discovered a passion for literature and sorting out difficult and subtle themes that interweave themselves into my life as the story unfolds.

I have learned, standing at the edge of a new road, how much Belmont has meant to me these last four years.  I have met professors that have left a permanent and deep mark on my life and my thoughts.  Through them, I have been challenged to physically and intellectually go places I never thought I would.  I consider their example and impact to be of the highest quality, and as I consider what my future will look like, the thing I mourn most is the loss of their daily presence in my life.  The School of Religion at Belmont truly is remarkable and I will miss my little academic family.  Likewise, my fellow graduates in the School of Religion are inspirations to me in their creativity, uniqueness, and intelligence.  Everyone I have had the privilege to walk through this journey with was so kind and so smart, I felt myself being stretched and challenged just by being around them.  I am excited to see where they will all end up because I know the world is waiting in deep need of their gifts.

This may seem silly, but I will also miss the vibrancy and creativity that is inherent at Belmont, and even Nashville as a whole.  I don't even know how this happens, but each and every person is the next greatest artist out there.  I will miss the incredible music that has been made and is yet to be made here, whether it is in the Curb Event Center, Massey, Harton, or out on the quad.  I will miss the visual art that I don't always understand, but that still always engrosses me.  I will miss the clothes, music, and attitude of hipsters hanging around campus and Bongo Java.  I will miss walking to class and spotting so many friends or stopping at Bongo to grab a coffee and read a book or converse with a friend.  I will miss hearing the bell tower signal that I am late for class again and I will miss lying in the grass between classes, soaking up the Nashville weather.  All of this is what makes Belmont feel like home for me and right now I can't stand that I am leaving it behind.

Last of all, and definitely not least of all, I will miss all of my incredible friends that I have gathered in my past four years.  I have been so blessed to know each and every one of them... from my friends in my honors group freshman year, to fellow music or religion majors, to random people I kept bumping into.  They largely made my experience what it is, and I plan to see them as often as possible in the 'real world,' but even if some of us never cross paths again, they have made a lasting impression on me.

I will never forget the few days before graduation, where we were scrambling to see as many friends as possible and to do as many of our favorite things around Nashville as we could.  I was so grateful my fiance and best friend was able to share these memories with me.  I will forever cherish the memory of walking around the Belltower with some of my closest friends, holding a candle, placing my hand on that beloved monument and praying for my future and for the futures of the students that will someday come to my school.  I remember the cool brick under my fingers as I stood and thanked God for my experience and prayed that I would have courage and strength to carry into my post-Belmont life.  My time at Belmont is incredibly special to me and I pray for every single man and woman that steps up to Wright or Patton halls in the fall, suitcase in hand, to start a new chapter in his or her life.  My time is up, but theirs is just beginning, and it will be an incredible journey for both of us.

Paul and the Difficulties of Scripture

One of the more recent things I have been wrestling with is my view of the Bible.  I grew up believing that the Bible is the Word of God.  We do what it says and we read it to find what God is saying to us, end of story.

But the more I get into reading and studying Scripture, the more questions I have.  What do I do with the fact that the Bible has discrepancies?  I can't take two conflicting things side by side and accept both of them as truth.  I just can't.

And while I'm at it, what do I take as truth in the Bible?  Am I expected to believe that stories containing horrendous tragedies like rape and incest and murder were divinely directed by God?  Did God ordain those events?  If he didn't, then what purpose do they serve?

Talking more specifically, I have been wrestling with gender in regards to theology and church practice.  Paul talks some about gender roles in the New Testament and most churches that place restrictions on what women can or can't do take their reasons from his letters in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2.  His words seem pretty cut-and-dry that women should remain silent in the church.

Now, I could bore you for hours with research others have done about these verses.  There are shelves of books I could show you on the meaning of those words in Greek or about why Paul said that to some women and not to others.  I could say that there are a few strong examples of women teaching theology to men in the New Testament or that we don't take Paul's words about head coverings or being saved through childbirth as commands.  I could show you verses only chapters earlier in the same letters that talk about women prophesying in the church.

But none of that would change the fact that some people take these words as God's words to the church. And won't be swayed.

I think the whole conversation ends up coming down to one point: what kind of church do we want to be?  Are we a Christian church or are we a Pauline church?  Is our theology based on THE Word of God: Jesus Christ, who was with God in the beginning, or do we base our ideas on Paul's theology, a great teacher and icon of Christianity, but nonetheless, a fallible man?  Are Paul's words God speaking directly to us now or should we regard them as in a certain place in history?  Do Paul's words change the way we see Jesus interacting with women, or Jesus the basis on which we should frame gender discussions in the church?

Honestly, I am still wrestling with what I think, but the half-baked conclusion I have come to is that the premises behind Paul's words are more important than his words themselves.  So when Paul was talking to the Corinthian church, a church very much removed from our time and culture, what was he getting at about church order?  About education for teachers?  About reverence and obedience to God?  Maybe his emphasis wasn't on right places for genders, but on other issues plaguing the church. We have to remember that if it is true that Paul's letters were written before the Gospels were written down, then Paul likely had very limited access to these documents.  He was doing the best with what he knew and we should tread lightly when we make his words commands from God.

I know this changes the way I view Scripture.  I know that I am treading into somewhat dangerous territory when I start to put the Bible into compartments.  But, I don't know any other way to reconcile some of the issues that I read.  What do you think?

Danger

Today I thought I'd share a reflection I wrote yesterday for my Religion and Arts Symposium class.  We are putting on an event with the theme "Feasting in Dangerous Places" as the capstone event of our college career, and each of us were given a part of the theme to write on.  This will be part of the theological framework to help connect the different pieces of art being presented.  My part of the theme was danger, but I wanted to focus this idea on more than the connotation we typically think of, which is physical danger.  I wanted to focus more on the Biblical idea of danger.  So, without further ado, here is my reflection.

Danger. 

It makes us think of the movies, of war zones, exploding bombs, and machine guns relentlessly banging, aiming at anything in sight.  We think of innocent civilians, ducking, covering their heads from the cracking ceiling that could cave at any moment.  We think of broken glass and used needles littering the streets or small children, shrinking day-by-day with the deep, relentless hunger that pains them.  We think of poverty, of disease, of despair.  The bleak.  The hopeless. The broken.

We sit back in on our cushy, decorative couches, watching these events roll by on our new flat-screen TV that we received for Christmas.  We feel a sadness and burden for these people, one that probably will go no further than donating a few dollars to the Red Cross.  We turn off the television and go on with our lives: our very own busy, consumer-driven, American dream.  Our minds are consumed with getting ahead and staying ahead and we can only thank God that we live in this nation that makes us feel safe and full.

What is our danger?  We have it all figured out.  After all, we have mended bodies and cured disease.

Our danger is found in the comfortable, the happy and content.  It is dangerous when we go buy the latest model of iphone and walk right past the homeless man who desperately needs a meal.  We find danger when we make big meaty dinners, only to throw away a third of what we made.  We find it when we go out and buy new clothes when our closet is stuffed to the brim.  We are in danger when we entertain a selfish dream and risk losing our souls in the process.

Consider Jesus’ words to us:

Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.  What will it profit you if you gain the whole world but forfeit your life?