Sunday, May 20, 2012
I thought that I heard you laughing
If the thoughts, emotions and experiences one has throughout life can be seen as the thread gradually assembling their life's garment, I think I would be immediately able to spot this year's patch in mine. It would be visible by the course thread that shoved itself obstinately through two fabrics. That thin, veil-like material that comes in bolts of feigning pink and angry fuchsia -- that is the one of my identity. It's very existence testifies to indulgence rather than durability, and the seamstress has to use fine scissors when cutting it, so as not to offend. The thick, earth toned corduroy that lies underneath is that of the Church. It is used to being summarized as the institutions, personalities, and ideals one person encounters as she gradually becomes convinced she knows it. The very fact that needles have to be changed in order for it to be penetrated begs the question if the veil will withstand the stitch -- or if it will get caught and sent into fraying fits along the way, tight fists of fabric and thread to be patiently unravelled and salvaged before continuing.
My first week of classes here, alone, were enough to prove valid the sneaking suspicion that I was silly to think I could trip into this continent, and insert myself into the Roman system. Since then, I have talked myself down from furious promises and solemn swears made in the dark. Promises I made to myself to abort the premature mission, cut my losses, and return to safe ground before the already vulnerable flame of my personal identity was suffocated to the point of exhaustion. I would rather, I have been certain, maintain the spontaneous warmth I could count on feeling at least from time to time among the passageways between my heart and mind than have it permanently highjacked. Before my personality, body, and creativity were shoved underground in some wet corner of this cold, stone city, I had to return to where I could know, where I am known.
But, what if I stayed? Would it be pride? Fear? Or would it be the beginnings of reconciling the materials I have been given in this life to where they may no longer need to be so blatantly contradictory, or laboringly dramatic, but just whole.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Plenty Like me to Be Found
I recently quit my job, said goodbye to my family, and moved to Italy. Don't worry... while I'm not opposed to happening across the love of my life in the process, I'll do what I can to make sure these pages don't read like an attempted Eat, Love, Pray.
This journey was initiated by a series of encounters that made it clear that it was time to look critically at some of the judgments I had grown accustomed to making in life. Rather than remaining preoccupied with how much we, as individuals, as families, as countries, as churches, are falling short of our potential, I have made a conscious decision to begin looking for traces of us at our best. A stanza that a dear friend read to me once in a camp coffee shop on an early-summer Sunday comes to mind as playing a significant role in this process. Caryll Houselander, in her book The Reed of God, speaks of the ways we risk missing out on half of a person's character when we see them only in a light based off of some insufficiency of our own. The same stands true, she warns, when trying to form a relationship with He who is permanent and good: "We become what our conception of Christ is."
Rather than imaging God elevated far from us, watching concernedly while the hems of his long, white garments wisp over -- but never touch -- the dirt of all that we have yet to change about ourselves, I have begun to more actively seek him where I am convinced he'd rather be -- living in and through those whom he loves. We don't tend to think about it much -- a love like that which a God has for his creation -- it is kind of intense. I think it is intense like that so that we don't ever feel as though we've exhausted it as our food for contemplation. I also think that looking at ourselves and others in light of this love is the first step to beginning to discern solutions to the very valid problems that face our world today -- and the source of the nutrients it will undoubtedly take to continue to be propelled in such pursuits when the going gets tough (as it tends to do from time to time). How are we meant to live as a response to love? How am I being called to respond to this reality?
During this period of re-education, I will strive to:
1.) Be Vulnerable
Learning a new language by way of immersion, as an adult, has a way of introducing you to childhood all over again. And, since sitting in a room alone has very little educational value when striving to relate to a foreign culture, it very quickly makes you appreciate the value of basic human interaction, even if you can't understand a word that is being said.
2.) Be a Listener
For years now, I have been dutifully honing the skills of defending, arguing, and classifying. I think I have finally begun to understand the things you cannot achieve with clenched fists (for starters: embrace, give, receive, nourish yourself, feel, etc.). In Rome, as in most large cities, people have a habit of not looking at each other. there are tons of us on the streets, at nearly all hours of the day and night, but we are scanning maps, phones, historic cites, and storefronts. We rarely acknowledge the person walking by. this will be another way I hope to listen.
3.) Optimistically probe the intersection of the past and the present
It is often said that Rome is the city of paradox. Out of the crevices of the hard, lifeless remnants of centuries passed emerge, day after day, millions of living, breathing people. Nearly every street is lined with Catholic churches that each brilliantly attest to an identity and ideal that once was strong enough to unite an empire. But those same churches are nearly always sparsely attended for daily/weekly mass, as they are throughout other swaths of Europe. What is wrong with this picture? Surely one doesn't have to be among those who devote their lives to formally studying the fruits of ancient philosophy, the rhetoric of Roman art and architecture, or the origins and development of Christianity in order for it to have something to say for ordering the tapestry of your life.
So, andiammo! While the thought of "blogging" still kind of makes me sick to my stomach, I hope for this to be a place to share some ponderings and laughs along the way.
This journey was initiated by a series of encounters that made it clear that it was time to look critically at some of the judgments I had grown accustomed to making in life. Rather than remaining preoccupied with how much we, as individuals, as families, as countries, as churches, are falling short of our potential, I have made a conscious decision to begin looking for traces of us at our best. A stanza that a dear friend read to me once in a camp coffee shop on an early-summer Sunday comes to mind as playing a significant role in this process. Caryll Houselander, in her book The Reed of God, speaks of the ways we risk missing out on half of a person's character when we see them only in a light based off of some insufficiency of our own. The same stands true, she warns, when trying to form a relationship with He who is permanent and good: "We become what our conception of Christ is."
Rather than imaging God elevated far from us, watching concernedly while the hems of his long, white garments wisp over -- but never touch -- the dirt of all that we have yet to change about ourselves, I have begun to more actively seek him where I am convinced he'd rather be -- living in and through those whom he loves. We don't tend to think about it much -- a love like that which a God has for his creation -- it is kind of intense. I think it is intense like that so that we don't ever feel as though we've exhausted it as our food for contemplation. I also think that looking at ourselves and others in light of this love is the first step to beginning to discern solutions to the very valid problems that face our world today -- and the source of the nutrients it will undoubtedly take to continue to be propelled in such pursuits when the going gets tough (as it tends to do from time to time). How are we meant to live as a response to love? How am I being called to respond to this reality?
During this period of re-education, I will strive to:
1.) Be Vulnerable
Learning a new language by way of immersion, as an adult, has a way of introducing you to childhood all over again. And, since sitting in a room alone has very little educational value when striving to relate to a foreign culture, it very quickly makes you appreciate the value of basic human interaction, even if you can't understand a word that is being said.
2.) Be a Listener
For years now, I have been dutifully honing the skills of defending, arguing, and classifying. I think I have finally begun to understand the things you cannot achieve with clenched fists (for starters: embrace, give, receive, nourish yourself, feel, etc.). In Rome, as in most large cities, people have a habit of not looking at each other. there are tons of us on the streets, at nearly all hours of the day and night, but we are scanning maps, phones, historic cites, and storefronts. We rarely acknowledge the person walking by. this will be another way I hope to listen.
3.) Optimistically probe the intersection of the past and the present
It is often said that Rome is the city of paradox. Out of the crevices of the hard, lifeless remnants of centuries passed emerge, day after day, millions of living, breathing people. Nearly every street is lined with Catholic churches that each brilliantly attest to an identity and ideal that once was strong enough to unite an empire. But those same churches are nearly always sparsely attended for daily/weekly mass, as they are throughout other swaths of Europe. What is wrong with this picture? Surely one doesn't have to be among those who devote their lives to formally studying the fruits of ancient philosophy, the rhetoric of Roman art and architecture, or the origins and development of Christianity in order for it to have something to say for ordering the tapestry of your life.
So, andiammo! While the thought of "blogging" still kind of makes me sick to my stomach, I hope for this to be a place to share some ponderings and laughs along the way.
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