octolilly [through the years]

Dear Readers,

I will no longer be writing at Aelki. It is not my intention to make a dramatic announcement or to appear fickle. But this decision has been born out of larger choices that I am making in my life right now. However, I do want to share something with you that will shed light on the changes ahead.

Brent Curtis & John Eldredge wrote the following in The Sacred Romance.

~

What, then, is the way of that less-traveled second road- the road that is the way of the heart?

We usually think of the middle years of the Christian life as a time of acquiring better habits and their accompanying virtues. But inviting Jesus into the “aching abyss” of our heart, perhaps has more to do with holding our heart hopefully in partial emptiness in a way that allows desire to be rekindled. “Discipline imposed from the outside eventually defeats when it is not matched by desire from within,” said Dawson Trotman. There comes a place on our spiritual journey where renewed religious activity is of no use whatsoever. It is the place where God holds out his hand and asks us to give up our lovers and come live with him in a much more personal way. It is the place of relational intimacy that Satan lured Adam and Eve away from so long ago in the Garden of Eden. We are both drawn to it and fear it. Part of us would rather return to Scripture memorization, or Bible study, or service – anything that would save us from the unknowns of walking with God. We are partially convinced our life is elsewhere. We are deceived.

“We are half-hearted creatures,” says Lewis in The Weight of Glory, “fooling about with drink and sex and ambition [and religious effort] when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

At some point on our Christian journey, we all stand at the edge of those geographies where our heart has been satisfied by less-wild lovers, whether they be those of competence and order or those of indulgence. If we listen to our heart again, perhaps for the first time in a while, it tells us how weary it is of the familiar and the indulgent.

We find ourselves once again at the intersection with the road that is the way of the heart. We look down it once more and see what appears to be a looming abyss between the lovers we have known and the mysterious call of Christ, which we now realize is coming from the other side. Jesus appears to be holding out his hand to us even as he calls us. He tells us he will provide a bridge over the chasm if we will abide in him. We hear his words, but such language is strange to us, sounding like the dialects of many who have used us or consumed us and then left us along the highway, exposed and alone. We pull back. Many of us return to Vanity Fair and mortgage our hearts to purchase more of what is religiously or materially familiar.

A few of us arouse our spirit and take a step toward the chasm. We dig into our valise and pull out the old and torn parchment of road map and journal entries left by those who have traveled the way of the heart before us; the ones we had treated with such disdain. This time the words intrigue us. We realize they are telling us something about our heart that is true. One of them writes:

‘Tis hard for us to rouse our spirits up –
It is the human creative agony
Though but to hold the heart an empty cup
Or tighten on the team the rigid reign.
Many will rather lie among the slain
Than creep through narrow ways the light to gain –
Than wake the will, and be born bitterly.
(George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul)

Yet, “holding our heart an empty cup” and “tightening on the team the rigid reign” is language we are not familiar with. Our lovers have so intertwined themselves with our identity that to give them up feels like personal death. Indeed, they have kept us from knowing the emptiness of our heart’s cup. We wonder if it possible to survive without them. We look once more at the journal to see if this sojourner ahead of us can offer any encouragement. He writes:

But we who would be born again indeed,
Must wake our souls unnumbered times a day
And urge ourselves to life with holy greed,
Now open our bosoms to the wind’s free play,
And now, with patience forceful, hard, lie still
Submiss and ready to the making will
Athirst and empty, for God’s breath to fill.

We pull out another of the old journals and read the apostle Peter’s warning that our adversary is constantly at work (the lion seeking to devour us) to convince us that there is nothing wildly good, either in us, in God, or in his plans for the future….”There is no such thing as true goodness,” our adversary roars, “and if there is, it’s deadly dull.”

We wonder if it is our enemy who has convinced us that “good” is synonymous with “nice”: the way we would be required to behave in Aunt Suzy’s parlor on a warm summer afternoon when we would rather be swinging from a rope over the swimming hole.

Intrigued by these things and feeling the wind’s free play on our face in a way we have almost forgotten, we seriously consider stepping out down the road we have so long feared and avoided. Just then our old lovers reach out for us with a vengeance. They promise us they will fill our heart to overflowing again if we will just give them one more chance. They even promise to become more religious if that will help.

Drawn by the familiar sound of their voices, and still somewhat anxious about the unknown journey ahead of us, we reach into our briefcase one last time to see if there is any solution to such double-mindedness. We find these words written by another traveler who also faced the chasm that has tortured and perplexed us so deeply. He assures us that even our deep ambivalence is part of the journey of the heart and that only severe measures by God himself can free us. He exhorts us to pray like this:

Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new,
I, like an usurped town, to another due;
Labor to admit you, but, oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend;
But is captive and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you and would be loved fain;
But am betrothed unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you entrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
(John Donne, “Batter My Heart”)

~

And that is where I find myself right now. Vanity Fair has never really felt like my home.

“We arrive at the Vanity Fair that John Bunyan describes in The Pilgrim’s Progress. It is a familiar city populated with many of the companions we had hoped to leave behind: deadness of spirit, lack of loving-kindness, lust, pride, anger, and others. Nonetheless, having been out on the Christian journey for a number of years by now, we assume that this is as close to the Celestial City as we’re ever going to get. We set up housekeeping and entertain ourselves as well as possible at the booths in the Fair that sell a variety of soul curiosities, games, and anesthetics. The curiosities sold at the fair are endless in their diversity, many of them good in and of themselves: Bible study, community service, religious seminars, hobbies we try to convince ourselves are eternally transcendent, service to our church, going out to dinner. But we find ourselves doing them more and more to quiet the heart voice that tells us we have given up what is most important to us.”

I am boldly whispering the prayer of batter my heart. Those three words are easy to whisper, easy to write, but hard to live. I’m tired of the entertainment in Christian circles, tired of the booths at the Fair and dreadfully tired of the masques. I do not pretend to have all the answers nor do I believe that praying batter my heart is all I need to become more like Christ. But I do know it is a step in the right direction and that for all of my days, I will ache for Him to fill that God-shaped vacuum in my heart.

Aelki has certainly been a chapter in my life that is worth telling, for it brought me dear friendships (and a husband!) that I will always cherish. But I know that this chapter is closing and now I will choose to listen quietly. For I do not know what tomorrow holds but I do know who holds all of my tomorrows.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. Seek His face always and cleave to all that is good and true.