An Introvert’s Dilemma

Posted on November 7th, 2012

It starts young.

You were the odd one out. The weird kid. Never the first and too often the last picked for teams at recess. You could hold conversations with adults but usually preferred to spend time alone. You had a mind – and used it! – but didn’t necessarily communicate what you were thinking. You didn’t like to fight to be heard. The family played Pinochle at Christmas and you read a book. The family played Rummy and you played Solitaire. Your mother reminded you, “Well, you know, that story will be there later but if you want to watch this movie with us, you have to do it now.”

Truthfully, you liked it that way. It’s not that you were escaping your life…it’s just that everything was so interesting. There was so much to learn. Why did inertia almost make you fall over when your dad drove around the corner too fast? How does depth perception work? What does the word love really mean, anyway?

Maybe your family was part of the problem. Introverts make up a relatively small percentage of the population, but somehow your family was full of them. You lived in the middle of nowhere, and you didn’t have parties, and your parents only had one or two close friends.

And you never knew that this was unusual or problematic until you lived alone. You didn’t know it right away even then.

Sure, it was hard sometimes. You got lonely. The first year you moved to a new city after college you thought you’d NEVER have any friends again. But you joined a church, served on their music team, made a couple of friends, and spent time with your family. You learned to put down your books and pick up your nieces and nephews, you maintained a couple of very close friendships you made in college, and you still spent hours upon hours alone.

It made sense to you. During those few years in college when you experimented with extraversion, it was like you had lost large pieces of your personality, and you were grateful to have them back. And isn’t it better to have depth and substance than to only be a mirror that reflects back whatever everyone else wants to see?

Somewhere along the line, though, you began to change. You realized that the modern Western world is an extremely isolating and unhealthy sort of place. You read stories about real community by Wendell Berry and it moved you to tears. You feared sometimes that you were wasting your life. But you still didn’t really worry about it.

Then it suddenly hit you like a freight train. A few of the people you love most in the world called you on it. You were told by one of the most introverted people you knew that your introversion was more extreme than theirs. Your friends told you that you made poor impressions on others because you just didn’t care what anyone else thought and your family confessed to covering for you when that had happened. One person pointed out that it doesn’t matter how rich your inner life is if you never communicate it with anyone else and that you might as well make your interactions with people work for you rather than against you. Your sister said you owed your mom an apology, because she’d been trying to tell you for years. You worried that the people you love and would give your life for are embarrassed by and ashamed of you.

And that was just the beginning.

Hard things happen, and you feel alone – because everyone else has their own drama and because you don’t feel like anyone understands or wants to keep talking. You realize that the only thing that makes this kind of solitude feel okay is the hope and expectation that life won’t always be this way. You’re not misanthropic, just introverted. You still need community. You still want a family. And you don’t really have control over it, but you know that, given that a large number of the people you love most are thousands of miles away, something has to change. Getting out of your apartment and spending time with new people becomes one of the hardest and most urgent things you can do.

So you’re faced with a difficult balance. How do you remain yourself while also being proactive about time with people? How do you step past banal small talk and build real relationships? How do you get the rest your introversion requires while not drowning in your sudden loneliness? And how on earth do people in 21st century America meet each other in the first place? Much as you appreciate the theme song to “Cheers,” the bar scene just isn’t going to cut it. The people in your little town are mostly your dad’s age. And your church is small. You’ve got to be creative about this.

It’s still – STILL – probably better to have to come at things from this angle than the alternative. You’re not all polish and other people’s opinions. You’re not a second-hander. You’re not Peter Keating, but God grant that you’re not fully Howard Roark either. You have depth and substance – you just have to figure out how to share it and not be a jerk.

And somehow, in spite of how hard it is, it’s still all okay. Even during the moments when it feels like no one else cares, God does. After all, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8, NIV) And there’s this: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)

God thinks you’re worth the trouble, and he’s not embarrassed by you. He redeems you and makes you part of a beautiful community that will never perish or fade and that will be perfected in love. Even if nothing ever changed, your “light and momentary trouble” would not be worth comparing with the glory that’s coming. Jesus is enough.

You’ve just got to get out there. And have fun doing it.

Posted in Deep Thoughts | Tagged as: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Cosmic ATMs and Nirvana

Posted on September 26th, 2012

So this is marginally related to idolatry, as discussed here, and also definitely related to the musings, opinions, & philosophies of everyone from St. Augustine to C.S. Lewis to Buddha to Kant to Santa Claus – but one of the most dysfunctional things about the human race is the way in which we deal with desire. It’s such a fundamental part of being human, and we ALL get it wrong.

It’s not even only that we get it wrong, but that we get it wrong in a million different ways. The objects of our desires are wrong. We desire things that are objectively terrible. We’re driven by all manner of greed, lust, power, pride, and violence. We don’t desire things that are objectively good. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – no, there’s no law against them, but they also definitely don’t come naturally.

And then aside from the objects of our desires…there is the sheer fact of desire itself. Is it good, or bad? What do you do with it? How do you deal with it?

Part of the problem with how we deal with it is that desire is not an end to itself. It looks toward something. It has a result. That result is either pain or pleasure, depending on whether that desire is fulfilled:

     ”Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
         but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

                                               -Proverbs 13:12, ESV

And I think that the result of desire – in either instance – is where it gets really sticky for people in ways that most of us don’t even recognize. Or maybe it’s the hope for that result to be positive and the fear that it won’t be. Within the Christian communities in which I’ve been involved, there are (at least) two opposing errors that people fall into. The first is to assume that because Mark 11:24 says that you’ll have whatever things you ask for in believing prayer and because Psalm 37:4 says that God will give you the desires of your heart, therefore you can ask for whatever you want, and if you’ve been GOOD ENOUGH, God will always give it to you. The second is to recognize that God does not always give you what you want, take a good hard look at how much it hurts when your desires aren’t fulfilled, and decide that because of that risk of pain, the desire itself isn’t worth it.

The first turns God into a Cosmic ATM. The second is looking for Nirvana. The first is “Prosperity Gospel.” The second is functional Buddhism – masquerading as whichever religion you prefer.

Both of those errors have had a profound effect on me at different points in time. God-as-a-cosmic-ATM was the source of a MAJOR shift in my philosophy and theology about halfway through college. Some really terrible things happened within my family and close friends, and I was suddenly confronted with this question: “If God loves us, why are all these bad things happening?” I went from being an Arminian Charismatic to a Reformed Calvinist. It was a drastic change. I needed it, though – and the main reason was Reformed theology’s emphasis on the sovereignty of God. The story is too long to share, but there were clearly parts that had NOTHING to do with anyone’s sin – it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It just happened. So the options were either to believe that God wasn’t helping us because we weren’t good enough – or to believe that God was completely sovereign and loved us, and just wiser than we were about our suffering and what he meant to accomplish through it.

Desire-hurts-too-much I’ve encountered mainly in the context of relationships. I’ve seen it play out in more than one friend’s life. It springs from past pain and is deeply rooted in fear. One friend confessed to me that he hadn’t shed a single tear for years. Another called at the start of every potential relationship, deeply confused because she was never sure if she was attracted to the guys who were interested in her and was terrified that she would hurt them because she’d been so hurt herself. I’ve been strongly tempted myself to shut down in the face of a new beginning because I was afraid it could never work. It feels like safety and protection – but what it really does is sequester you in a very lonely prison cell which is locked from the inside. C.S. Lewis put it this way in The Four Loves:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

I don’t want to be either of those two things. They’re both wrong. They’re both harmful. And neither are what God intends for his people.

But the alternative is the most frightening thing possible: to accept and pray for God-given desires and to ALSO accept the pain that inevitably comes with them, turning for comfort to God rather than away from him. I think most normal, functioning people only do this to a certain point. They open themselves us to new, risky possibilities, but when the pain comes they shut down or turn around and take matters into their own hands. They get angry at God or they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and move on.

Maybe it’s just because I’m crazy, but that’s not an option for me. There came a moment about six years ago when I WANTED to shut my own desires down, and as clearly as I’ve ever thought God was teaching me anything, I heard him say, “No. I’m not going to let you shut yourself down. You’re trying to protect yourself, but that’s not your job. *I* am your defender. You need to trust me if this thing you want doesn’t happen, but also if it does.”

And that’s what it really comes down to, isn’t it? Trust. You can either try to handle life on your own, or you can rest in the hands of the One who made it.

If you choose that path, you’re in good company. I read this about Abraham last night:

“‘Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.’ 

If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only GOD can do, and you trust him to do it – you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked – well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.”

“Abraham was first named ‘father’ and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do, but on what God said he would do. And so he was made a father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, ‘You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!’

Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, ‘It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.’ Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, ‘Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.’”

-Excerpts from Romans 4, THE MESSAGE

Trust God. Even if everyone else thinks you’re crazy. Even if YOU think you’re crazy. Even if it feels like pain will tear you apart. He can raise the dead; He also can and will give you the desires of your heart when you delight in him. And if he brings pain, it’s for a reason. Either way it’s worth it.

Grace and peace, friends.

~V

Posted in Deep Thoughts | Tagged as: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Reality, Summer Vacations, and the Toppling of Idols

Posted on July 27th, 2012

Hi guys…it’s quarterly update time!

I suppose if I took the time to write here more often, I could focus on just one subject at a time. But….that kind of focus just isn’t my style. I like to have a finger in EVERY pie, all the time. I can’t choose just one!

(On a side note, I just realized that “finger in the pie” is one of those idioms that would be really confusing for a non-native English speaker. Just saying.)

At any rate, I’m sitting right now at a local coffee shop listening to a band called “Fish Tank Etiquette” and thinking about joy and sweet summertime and life. A local man who looks like Santa Claus and is ALWAYS in this coffee shop just came up to me to tell me about his new pet poodle after the old one had to be put down, and I’ve just finished a cup of very good but unfortunately decaf coffee with a whole mouthful of cinnamon at the bottom. In some ways, it’s been a crazy summer…and in other ways, I couldn’t really put my finger on just exactly WHAT I’ve been up to. But I’ll try.

One of the best things about this summer so far was my short vacation a bit over a week ago to New York. I suppose the last vacation I talked about on this blog was also in the city – I promise that’s not the only place I go for fun. But it was AWESOME. One of my best friends, Brad (http://bradmooreatwar.com/) was in town from New Zealand, and three of his Kiwi friends (http://exploringameri.ca/) were also around, so we spent a few days running around the city and basically having a great time. (Incidentally, both of those sites update MUCH more frequently than I do and are well worth a look.) Among many awesome things, we:

- Ate authentic, delicious, homemade Syrian food.

- Hung out with relatives (of Brad’s) who happened to have two very cute and smart small children.

- Spent some time in Times Square and on 5th Avenue.

- Took refuge in Grand Central Station after getting caught outside in a massive thunderstorm – with hail, even! I think I might have enjoyed that just a bit more than the Kiwis did…New England doesn’t have good thunderstorms nearly so often as the Great Plains do, and I’ve been in exile here for a while now. The weather is idyllic, but I do so miss the wind and glory of a good thunderstorm back home.

- Took photos of the city from the top of the Rockefeller Center.

- Wandered through Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, acting like we were meeting real celebrities and / or fictional characters…like Superman. And Jean-Luc Picard.

- Dressed to kill and went to Phantom of the Opera on Broadway….which was stunning for its sheer genius of stagecraft, in addition to a great story-line and iconic music.

- Missed several buses, ran through the Port Authority in a cocktail dress and heels (well, I did – not Brad or the Kiwis), stood outside and sweated in HOT weather, got help / a free car ride from a random older gentleman, took artsy photos under street lights, and argued about which constellation we were looking at on a deserted street in New Jersey at midnight.

It was a beautiful time. It wasn’t long enough for my taste, but it was full of REAL LIFE…and that’s something worth doing.

I’ve sort of been thinking about reality versus fantasy as a result this last week. I’ve had conversations with another close friend a few times about our mutual love of stories and about how sometimes you can allow stories, or TV shows, or movies, or your own imagination (at least for artistic, nerdy, creative types like the two of us) to sort of suck you in to the point where you allow it to drown out really important things. She took a bit of a fast from the stories and shows for a while to refocus her priority on God, people, and the things that really matter. It’s so critical to have your priorities straight on this sort of thing – because otherwise, your life flies past you and you don’t even notice it leaving.

It’s been said before by people wiser than I am that the most effective way to kill your idols is to replace them with something more beautiful and more good. Thomas Chalmers called this the “expulsive power of a new affection,” saying:

“There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world—either by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one.”

It’s not a direct application, but I’ve been thinking about this a little in terms of reality and fantasy. It’s easy enough to say you don’t want stories to be your idols….but do a few things that are really beautiful in REAL LIFE….and suddenly the stories just don’t have quite the same appeal, no matter how entertaining or beautiful they may be.

Of course, this applies to real things that are not ultimate things versus God himself, as well. Maybe the goal is always more reality, more life, more love, more truth – because the God of the universe is Himself the source and motivation for ALL life, all love, all reality, and all truth, and is ultimately more beautiful than anything else.

The interesting thing is when your idols are of things that are, in and of themselves, good things but not ultimate things. This is pretty common. I remember one Sunday in particular at my old church back in Nebraska where our pastor told us from the pulpit that he struggles with idolizing his three children. Obviously, you can’t just get rid of your kids if they tend to be idols to you! The goal in the case of these kinds of idols is more love – love for your kids, but MORE LOVE to Christ, love for your friends but MORE LOVE to Christ, love for your life but MORE LOVE to Christ. Love for the good things in your life but SO MUCH LOVE to Christ that everything else looks like hatred by comparison.

So drink in the beautiful things in your life, recognize them as blessings that flow out of God’s boundless love and evidence of His particular love to you, and love God for them and through them and above them, because He’s worth more than anything else in the universe.

I’ve been thinking about the nature of time as a result of all of these things, too – but that would turn a LONG blog post into an OUT-OF-CONTROL blog post, so I won’t go there tonight. And the coffee shop’s about to close, so maybe I’ll post pictures later. I’ll close, though, with a very good old hymn:

More love to Thee, O Christ, more love to Thee!
Hear Thou the prayer I make on bended knee.
This is my earnest plea: More love, O Christ, to Thee;
More love to Thee, more love to Thee!

Once earthly joy I craved, sought peace and rest;
Now Thee alone I seek, give what is best.
This all my prayer shall be: More love, O Christ to Thee;
More love to Thee, more love to Thee!

Let sorrow do its work, come grief or pain;
Sweet are Thy messengers, sweet their refrain,
When they can sing with me: More love, O Christ, to Thee;
More love to Thee, more love to Thee!

Then shall my latest breath whisper Thy praise;
This be the parting cry my heart shall raise;
This still its prayer shall be: More love, O Christ to Thee;
More love to Thee, more love to Thee!

-Eliz­a­beth P. Pren­tiss, 1856.

Grace and peace, friends.

~V

Posted in Deep Thoughts | Tagged as: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

An Introvert’s Survival Guide to Spontaneous Transcontinental Relocation

Posted on May 9th, 2012

Back story: Nearly three years ago I unexpectedly moved from my home in middle-of-nowhere, Nebraska, and landed in a small town right in the middle of three big cities in New England. Here are a few things I would tell someone like myself if I had access to a DeLorean and a reliable source of plutonium…

1. The utter spontaneity of your move will turn out okay – but not at all like you expected.

So you decided to move over a period of a week and a half. So you intend to move in with someone you know only for six or eight months on your way to the next big thing. So the guy on the other end of the line at the moving company not-so-subtly insinuates you’ve lost your mind when you tell him you need a truck by the end of the month. So the economy sucks. So what?

Turns out…six or eight months have a way of turning into years, but that’s okay. You’ll find a job, even if it’s not your dream job, and you’ll survive, and if you let yourself, you’ll learn a lot about life. Better start putting down roots right away, though – you’ll be here longer than you think.

2. Prepare for culture shock.

Yes, you will think that if you’re going to be in the same country, culture shock will not be an issue. You will be wrong. The people in your new place are going to be ruder than the people at home. Or maybe they’ll be more deceptive. Or more saccharine. Or more competitive. Pick an adjective. SOMETHING about them will be way outside of your comfort zone. And the streets will be set up all weird, and the drivers will be terrible, and you’ll never be able to find things in the grocery store. That doesn’t mean your new place is bad, but it will definitely throw you for a loop for a while.

3. Now is the time to find a hobby.

I don’t care how much of an introvert you think you are; you WILL get lonely. Yes, you need to go out and meet people and all those things all the extraverts will tell you – but for the moments when that’s too exhausting, having something you enjoy working on will help.

Here’s a secret, though…it will help more if you can figure out a way that you can sometimes connect your hobby to other people. If you’re a writer, find a writing group. If you play the guitar or create songs, see if your city (or if it’s small enough, your whole state) has a songwriter’s association. If you’re an artist, rent some studio space next to other artists. If you happen to have kids, coach their sports team. Do things you enjoy that other people enjoy too. It will help you begin to build relationships.

4. Join a church.

Okay, so not everyone is particularly religious, but find an organization you can join. Whatever it is, actually make a commitment to it, rather than just shopping around or making an appearance once in a while. Find a way that you can serve that organization. Take on responsibility. This will plug you in faster than anything else.

Churches are ideal for this – church people are morally obligated to be nice to you, even if you’re geekier than they are. Of course, there is also the whole trying to figure out the meaning of life / getting along with God thing…which I would argue is more than worth your time in the first place. And who knows? You just might find something worth doing that is desperately needed and that only you can do.

5. Attend community events.

Go to the open mic night at the coffee shop downtown – even if you don’t feel comfortable playing and you don’t know anyone. Go every week. Faces will start to be familiar, which will help with the loneliness…and sooner or later, some extravert will decide they can’t stand not knowing your name. When the town puts up its Christmas lights, go wander around the holiday celebration. Just make sure you stop by to watch the fire jugglers. (What? Your small town doesn’t have fire dancers at Christmas? Lame.)

5. TV and movies and books are not evil, but use them sparingly.

Seriously. It’s totally fine to distract yourself with media, or consume media just because you enjoy it…but don’t let it consume you. You will never connect with any sort of community if you’re always sitting in front of a screen. Not to mention that it’s really unhealthy and a total waste of your one and only precious life.

6. For the love of God, talk to people. And smile while you’re doing it.

Okay, so small talk is awkward anywhere, even at church. And yes, the guy your dad’s age at the coffee shop who starts on Ayn Rand and moves on to politics, cocaine, the border patrol, finer nuances of Spanish en castellano, and his genetic disability which earned him the nickname “Frog” before offering to give you scuba diving lessons (while you furiously pretend you can’t hear him) probably IS hitting on you. But so long as he doesn’t look dangerous (and there are other people around), would it really hurt you to talk a little while? If nothing else, you’ll have a killer story later. (In the hilarious sense, not in the literal oh-my-gosh-the-man’s-dangerously-insane sense. Just use a little wisdom here.)

And for every creep who’s legitimately and inappropriately hitting on you, there’s probably AT LEAST three or four kindly older community members who just really like talking to people. OR, the person talking to you may be as lonely as you are. Talk back to them…it’s not only the right thing to do, but it actually CAN be fun. Even if it’s awkward sometimes.

7. It WILL get better.

It takes a while for anyone to settle in to a new place after they move – especially an introvert. My pastor back in Nebraska told me right before I left that it had taken him and his wife two years to feel like they were starting to make a home after they moved. I found that to be pretty accurate…after two years, acquaintances start to become friends and strange places start to feel a little more like home. There will probably be times when you feel like you’ll never fit in and never have a reason to leave your apartment again – but it will get better. Just give it a little time.

What do you think? Any ideas to add for the suddenly dislocated introvert?

Posted in Vignettes of V | Tagged as: , , , , , | Leave a comment

“But godliness with contentment is great gain…”

Posted on April 15th, 2012

Life’s in the little things, isn’t it?

It’s not the car you drive, or the house you live in. It’s not the killer job or the city or the resume or the credit card offers in the junk mail sitting next to the shredder. It’s not the insurance policy or the retirement fund or the (ideally in the black) bank account. It’s not the hope of becoming a rockstar or a politician or an astronaut or another generic millionaire in a suit. It’s not the dream to travel to Paris, or Beijing, or Fiji, or the other side of the moon.

It’s not even the desire to catch the eye of that one attractive person you’ve got on your mind – who may, after all, never spare a moment’s thought for you in return.

But it IS the dust bunnies you must sweep from your floor, and the neon green stripes on your tennis shoes. It’s the smell of lemon Pine Sol on a Saturday morning or homemade pizza on a Sunday afternoon. It’s the feel of wind on your face and the call of the crows or seagulls when you run past the tall trees or down the beach. It’s the guitar strings and the piano keys under your fingertips. It’s sitting with the words of the wise and realizing that you don’t know all that much, really, and that you have nearly as much to learn as the child born yesterday. It’s the voice of your friend or your father or your young nephew on the phone. It’s the sun setting over the water and the rain pouring down outside. It’s a cup of coffee in the morning and the sound of your own heartbeat when you fall asleep at night.

It’s the beauty and wonder of the God-made-man who gave everything for love of you.

The past is only accessible for you through your memory – which studies show is not actually all that reliable anyway. The future you hope for might never come. Likewise with the future you dread. Your aspirations and intentions count – they keep you going and say a great deal about what sort of person you are – but what you really have, ALL you really have, is this present moment in which you are alive and the hope that there may be more. Take a breath; look around you. This is your LIFE.

And so most of the things we think we need to be happy are entirely unnecessary. More money won’t make you happy. Neither will a better job. If you’re lonely now (and you probably are – most of us are at least some of the time), then tying the knot with that person you’re crazy about won’t fix it, though it may help. The new clothes and exercise equipment and more powerfully whitening forms of toothpaste are only trappings of the fact that you are alive.

It’s one life you have, and it will end any time now. Enjoy it now, no matter your circumstances. Be happy now, without waiting for the next big thing that may never come. Take a breath now, and relish the feel of the air going in and out of your lungs. You are alive.

 

…But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen. 

–1 Timothy 6:6-16

 

Grace and peace, friends.

~V

Posted in Deep Thoughts | Tagged as: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Not dead yet…I’m getting better!” (Death, part II)

Posted on February 17th, 2012

So, as promised, here’s a continuation of my thoughts on mortality.

I’ve already said I think that death is both important to think about and dangerous if you fixate on it too much. (See Part I here.) The main reason death should not be ignored is that what you think about death makes a huge difference in how you live. Most people pretend that they are immortal. It makes it easier to feel in control of their lives. (A dear friend of mine in New Zealand writes eloquently on it here.)

But here’s the thing: this illusion of control is just that – an illusion. Whether you like it or not, and whether you feel strong right now or not, and whether you have faith in science or progress or modern medicine, the mortality rate on this sorrowful planet is 100%. Sooner or later, you WILL die, whether you like it or not. And no one ever promised you 80 or 90 years.

Maybe I just see it more because of the clinic where I work – but people of all ages are dropping like flies all around me. One thirty something I knew died last year when he choked on his own vomit in his sleep. One 19 year old I was aware of got stabbed in the heart in a fight on the street, and another hanged himself. A couple of people I’ve known have literally drunk themselves to death within the last year. What’s to stop your car from giving out on your way home tonight? What’s to stop you from choking to death on a blueberry or a baked bean at supper tomorrow? What’s to stop you from being run over in the crosswalk in front of the coffee shop – like a little old lady in small town Rhode Island was a couple of years ago? Only God – if, as I think, He’s really in control of the universe. And sooner or later, He won’t stop it from happening.

I think about this all the time…most of my family are significantly older than I am. So over the last year, I’ve thought about death just about every time I’ve talked to my mom or dad – it could be the last time I’ll get to. I think about it when I spend a Saturday evening with my sister or go out to dinner with my brother. I think about it when I go back home and hug my friends. I think about it so much because I want to appreciate them – in spite of their flaws and their weaknesses, they are beautiful people, and I love them more when I don’t take their presence for granted.

And I think about it for myself. Am I ready for death? Am I ready to stand before the Creator of the universe and give an account for the things that I’ve done? I’m no perfect person. I’m really much less “good” than probably most people think I am. There is darkness, and selfishness, and sin deeply rooted in my nature…and I have no hope for life after death apart from Christ. I think about death because I need him to live now, and to live ever.

And I think about it because I want my life to matter. If I think I have all the time in the world, I’ll fritter my time away on facebook or google. I’ll watch movies and tv shows and always think I’ll do something that matters later. I’ll give my money or give my time or create something beautiful “some day.”

But some day may never come. If I have the chance, it’s now. The chance to do something worth while may not be there tomorrow.

Carpe diem, right?

Aaaand we’ll end another really loooong post here. Sometime I may actually let you guys know what things I *have* been spending my time on…besides facebook and cracked.com articles.

Peace.

Posted in Deep Thoughts | Tagged as: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“I don’t want to follow death and all of his friends…” (Death, part I)

Posted on December 13th, 2011

So three months ago I said I’d type up a post dealing with some of my musings on the nature of death.  I, like Aslan, call all times soon.  Here goes…

So I’ve spent a LOT of time over the last year or two thinking about death. Maybe it’s because my sweet little grandma died a little more than two years ago. Maybe it’s because I got into a car wreck that should have been awful, and amazingly, left me only with stiff muscles and a scratched arm earlier this year. Maybe it was reading some random article on Cracked about dangerous animals and suddenly realizing that I sat on a bench within five feet of one of these a few years ago, which could pretty easily have killed me if it wanted and was probably a terrible idea at the time. Maybe it’s just because my mind works in large themes over the course of months or years, and death drew the lucky number. At any rate, it’s been right at the forefront of my thoughts for months.

I can hardly claim to have a definitive philosophy or theology on the meaning of death (or the meaning of life), but I’ve come to a few conclusions:

1.  Death is important to think about.

No brainer, right? But most people ignore this, probably in the interest of defending their own sanity. Death levels everything that we spend our lives chasing after, and if there is nothing beyond the grave, there really is nothing ultimately to be hoped for. No matter how awesome my life is, if I marry a millionaire or write ten best-selling novels or become a rock star or the President or Mother Theresa’s young American cousin, death is coming, and if it’s the end of things, then I have no hope and nothing to be joyful about. Ignoring this fact will only cause me to waste my life.

2. Death can be dangerous to think about.

Most people think too little about death…but a few think too much. Thinking about mortality has also required me to think about how we think about mortality. If we spend too much time thinking about death, if we fixate on it, we all too easily can become fearful or depressed.  And get this: thinking about death too much can also cause us to waste our lives, if not cut them short entirely.

There was a kid at my clinic who committed suicide last week. He was a relatively normal young man – only 19 years old – but somehow, something about his life overwhelmed him. There was another, an older man, who we sent to the hospital today because he wants to die. He handed me an ugly looking knife before he left. I’ve felt like that before – allowing yourself to fixate on death can itself be deadly.

3. What you think about death has a lot to do with what you think about life.

I had some really awesome conversations a couple of months ago with my dad and with one or two of my closest friends.  A couple of times I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, and their perspectives were extremely valuable. But my dad was the one with the most helpful comment, which ran something along these lines: “Well, if you fear death, think about the beginning. Where did you come from? Where did the world come from? Does it make sense that death is the end of your existence?” My answer to that has to be no, because of what I believe about the rest of the universe. You can look here for more details.

I’ll cut this short here to prevent this from becoming too massive of a post.  Maybe in another month or two I’ll add to it.  :-)

 

**Update: See Part II here.

Posted in Deep Thoughts | Tagged as: , , , , | Leave a comment

Long-Anticipated (or Unanticipated) Updates

Posted on September 17th, 2011

‘Allo, friends.  Look like this has turned into one of those every-couple-of-months blogs.  Better find a feed reader and subscribe if you ever want to hear from me again, probably.  :-)

But life is to be lived, and not merely documented, and that’s what I’ve been doing.

So it turns out that the things that I’m excited about and that I’ve been working on take time to be ready to be shared.  A lot of time.  And a LOT more experience than I have under my belt.  So for a little while, at least, this website will have to be a random place where I occasionally post what I’m thinking about and / or doing, rather than a playground for what I’m creating.  I’ve got more writing and recording and recruiting and producing and equipment upgrading and copyrighting to take care of before we’re ready for that.  But you’re a smart kid – you already figured that out.

Oh, and I need to get that silly piano in my kitchen tuned.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying life in a small New England town – for the most part.  The weed pollen is kicking my rear end here lately….and so are a few other things.  But my small town is right on the cusp of what is by far the most beautiful season in this part of the country.  I always think that fall here looks like Rivendell.

I’ve spent a lot of time here lately reading – and thinking.  For literature, I’ve spent a lot of time revisiting Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, We The Living) and a little time on Melville (Moby-Dick, of course…probably my favorite classic ever).

For deep thoughts, I find myself mulling over death and the meaning of life.  I’ll post more in-depth about that soon, I think.  Honestly, for the life of me I’ve NEVER been able to understand why most people spend most of their lives ignoring the fact of their own mortality.  It’s like we’re all on a stage (Shakespeare, anyone?) surrounded by cardboard cutout scenery….only most people actually make themselves believe that the cottages and houses are real and that there isn’t darkness and a probably painful fall off the edge behind them.  I can’t say just how many times I’ve been in crowds of people and wanted to either shake them or preach at them….and say, come on, man, wake up!  The stuff we spend most of our time on doesn’t matter – or rather, it only matters to the same extent that it serves the proper purpose for our existence on earth.

When it serves that proper purpose, then suddenly everything – even cardboard cutout trees and houses – matters.

Anyway. There’s New England in a nutshell for you.  And now it’s about time to make some terribly important and thoroughly delicious pumpkin-apple soup….and possibly some bread.  Peace.

Posted in Deep Thoughts, Vignettes of V | Tagged as: , , | 2 Comments

The Unanticipated

Posted on July 23rd, 2011

I’ve been thinking lately about how many things come up in life that you just don’t see coming…even though you probably should. I’ve run up against a lot of them the last couple of years, and especially during the last couple of months. Believe me when I say that my life has taken on shapes and colors and flavors that this little country girl didn’t expect.

Here are a few of the most recent ones:

–Dentist appointments in Boston (surprising mostly because of the Boston part…given the fact that I hail from small town Nebraska where the dentist is also the mayor.)

–Feeling overheated in 80 or 90 degree weather. New England has made me a wimp.

–Friendships with 40 year old divorcees and 70 year old Jewish men and 60′s-ish Catholic nuns and a whole host of other people. I think I could actually say that I look at my coworkers right now mostly as friends, rather than just coworkers. Funny how a small office in a crazy (literally) atmosphere will do that for you.

–Hordes of teenagers and random men and a few non-overwhelming friends who are eager to learn something about music…and for some reason, look at me as a teacher. I’ve had everything from “I could play the piano in church sometime…I know half of Fur Elise” to “Come over for dinner at my place tonight and help me figure out text messaging on my phone and how to buy chord books off Amazon.”

–Related to the aforementioned music, the necessity to figure out a way to weed through all the hopefuls with stars in their eyes and encourage them to learn while still preserving my free time and my sanity. Oh man…I wish I could, but there’s just no way I can meet individually with every person who has approached me lately.

–A core group of women at church on the music team who, although as eager to do well as the rest of them, are also eager to help me and protect me from being overwhelmed with the amount of work I could, but shouldn’t, put into this. I have been *seriously* blessed by these girls. They’ve done everything from praying to fixing me dinner to sitting and talking with me for hours about how to maintain my composure and my boundaries to running interference for me when they see a line forming after church and my eyes getting just a little wild.

 

I dunno.  All of the things I’ve been doing lately have been incredibly stretching…and probably good for me. But they’ve been a little on the crazy side, too. During weeks like this one I’m grateful for a few close friends and family who pull me back to earth when things take me by surprise.

Posted in Vignettes of V | Tagged as: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Elegy

Posted on June 7th, 2011

(Almost two years late, and neither earthy nor elegant words could suffice. Alas…)

 

You were a clattering kitchen of redolent breads and wines sparkling.

Now you lie dormant, your instruments broken and crumbling.

Bright were your lanterns. Your ovens were hot with the fires swift burning.

All at the table. Both strangers and friends welcomed warmly.

All your most natural days were filled with every small child chattering.

Your sudden downfall left cookies and dominoes scattering.

There your young women sat, giggling voices but ears closely listening.

There a young man with his future bride, all eyes to glistening.

You had known heartache. A life of hard labor, of loss and betrayal.

Still you were faithful, and on your lips ever a smile.

None understood well how you could face poverty, fear and death following,

Sicknesses swallowing your health, yet you’d still comfort us.

We were not ready to watch you embark on that last bitter journey,

Most bitter for us, but for you a loved homeland was beckoning.

Now set your table. Array all your plates. Put your pies in the oven.

And hang your lamp high in the doorway to light our returning.

Posted in Poetry | Tagged as: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

  • Categories

  • Archives

  • Subscribe