Friday, October 27, 2006

Puzzles and Mysteries I saw Seattle Public Theatre's production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal last night at the Bathhouse Theatre at Greenlake. It was great to see Bob Borwick and Heather Hawkins work in this beautiful, but difficult play about long affairs and friendships, and the impact of each on the other. Long one of my favorite plays, I was very happy to see those famous "Pinter pauses" played so well. But before the play began, my friend Nikki and I were talking about life and religion and mystery and stuff, like we always do. And she wondered if she'd sent me a quote about puzzles and mysteries that went something like this: "A puzzle is a thing to be solved. A mystery is a thing to be experienced." I'm sure that's not quite right, but that's the gist of it. My response was something like, "Mystery is the experience as you work to solve the puzzle." This morning, I've been thinking about that analogy, and I journaled a sort of metaphor/analogy/parable that I'm finding helpful. I'm going to post the entry to see if any of you have any thoughts about it's validity. It's about honoring the emptiness of a vacancy in the puzzle rather than living with the long consequences of trying to stuff the wrong piece in to its place. Staying with the puzzle: breaking faith with oneself is when you make moves in puzzle solving that you know will not solve the puzzle. There is a kind of insanity to that. As if there is a desire to make a piece that will not fit, fit. So you linger over it, pushing and turning, shoving here and there. Then you put the piece down, but since you cannot find the one that goes there, you pick up the same piece that does not fit, and try again to stuff it into place. After you do this enough times, perhaps you decide to leave the piece in place, and squint your eyes, somehow making it up that while the piece doesn't fit, you can live with the puzzle as it is. After all, other sections of the puzzle are coming along nicely, and there are whole parts that are quite beautiful. But you return and return to the distortion, thinking perhaps to keep looking for the right piece, but you're too tired. Who needs a puzzle put together anyway? Life with a busted puzzle is fine. It's our relationship to puzzle making, and in particular that wrong piece, that is the mystery. We think Jesus is going to come in and put the right piece where it goes. But maybe he just comes along and stands there as we work the puzzle. We keep telling people that something happens when we get Jesus, that he brings new pieces, that he recolors the piece that's there, or perhaps says the puzzle doesn't matter, or something. But perhaps all he does is stand there watching. What if he just says, "I know that piece is wrong, and you know it's wrong, but what I want you to know is that I'm going to stand here with you, and if you want my help taking this piece away and finding another possible piece, I'll help you. You reach to move it, and I reach at the same time, and it will be my hand that will make all the difference. But either way, I love you more than you can imagine. How wonderful it is to stand at the puzzle together." So there he stands, and we look at the puzzle piece one more time. This is critical. We know the piece doesn't fit. No need to pretend it does. And we know that we can live with it, with the distortion it brings. We've been living with it for years. The question is this: why? Why not work the puzzle in hope that real pieces that fit will somehow show themselves? Why not leave a hole of possibility rather than stuff the wrong thing in it? Might emptiness have its own beauty? Is this what the mystics have been telling us? If we allow the beauty of the emptiness, and embrace it, and trust the mystery that there is somewhere a piece that will fit in that part of your puzzle, do we make room for the very piece we are looking for? Perhaps we've not found it because there is no empty space for it. Its place is occupied by a piece everyone agrees will not fit. If we open the space, might not the piece we need make itself known?" Living with undone puzzles... 8:50:42 AM    comment []

The Wrecks We Are I'm not going to write a long post today, but I am going to point to one. Here's a long, challenging article from Michael Spenser over at The Internet Monk on the nature of being human in the midst of following Jesus. "When I am Weak: Why We Must Embrace Our Weakness and Never Be Good Christians." Read it. Because of several experiences recently, small surges of emotion and thought in reaction to some innocuous event or word spoken, I'm beginning to think a transformation is in full swing. And it is simply this: it's time for me to re-imagine this whole Kingdom of God business. As I've been known to say lately, "There are so many ways to approach living." One of my themes over the past few years has been the gap that exists between the seemingly powerful spiritual lives of the people of the New Testament and the rather paltry spiritual lives led by me and the majority of Christians I know. Paul and company threw out demons. These days, we're the ones getting tossed around. And maybe The Internet Monk is simply capitulating to the fact that we're such lousy Christians anymore. But I think he may be on to the truth of things: Christians have always been lousy at being Christians, and it's a terrible injustice, not to mention lie, when we run around saying we're "good" Christians. I've always believed that how we view our humanity is critical. And in a sort of underground, quiet way, I've always fought for a central place at the table for our brokenness and sin. Not the sin that's fixed, but the sin that remains, the sin we battle and rage against, praying a thousand thousand times to be delivered from--that life of sin. How we relate ourselves to our brokenness is a key in how we see our identity whether we follow Jesus or not. Francis Schaeffer used to say we should never be shocked at sin in others, because we have an inside track the real problem of human nature. I don't remember him saying we shouldn't be shocked at the sin in ourselves. Read the article and we'll talk some more... 6:04:41 AM    comment []

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