Three Short Tales of Consternation

It has been a long, long time since I have posted. Rest assured, faithful readers (all three of you), I am not giving up on the activity of blogging. On the contrary, here on this blog is where I find the freedom to express, even if just to myself, the deepest wonderings of my mind. Unfortunately, the frequent movement and relocation in my life of late has made it nearly impossible to sit down and do just that, express. Thankfully, I sit now in a coffee shop in West Houston, with simply a few moments to sit, think, and share but a few glimpses of my life over the past few months, and the ponderings that such experiences summon forth.
________

Consternation #1: The Job Search

Simply stated, it has not gone well. I struggle to find the place, but have been afforded fewer interviews than fingers on my right hand. Such failure dredges up a desire in me to want to react against the American church, Baptists and other specific denominations, and Truett Seminary itself. Many churches that I feel very qualified for reject me without so much as a phone call or a questionairre via e-mail, leaving me to wonder if it is because I am affiliated with Truett and the CBF, or because I am not yet ordained (though I hope to be eventually, when I find the right community in which to undergo the process). Other churches flatly turn me down for even an initial interview based on the flimsy excuse that I have no larger church experience. When I inquire how one obtains larger church experience, they all say I must work on a larger church staff. They have no real answer to my subsequent question: how do I work on a larger church staff when no larger church staff will hire me because I have not yet worked on a larger church staff?

I have fallen into some brief spells of depression, anger, and tearful sorrow, as it seems the search is wearing very thin, time is running out, and it appears I may have to do the one thing I do not want to do - teach high school. But I always assumed there would be a church, there would be a position. I suppose there is still much naivity in me.

Some people incredulously rebuke me for my frustration because they say I am not being open to God's leading. They tell me that looking only in the greater Houston area is limiting God's providence. I am not sure how I feel about that. I believe that God has led me to Leigh, the love of my life, and that he has a plan for me in the Houston area. Calvinism and Armenianism notwithstanding, I don't believe I can thwart the plans of God. However, my present circumstances seem more in favor of those who tell me that I can.

_______

Consternation #2: Negative, Cynical Me

I am a cynical person. I do not blame Truett for making me this, but I do recognize that it was not until I came through seminary that I began examining the Church in a much more serious, careful light. This has caused me to reject a lot of shallowness that I see in the Church, especially in evangelical circles, specifically in the area of worship. I can become very negative about some churches and their services, but I am even more negative toward myself. I hate how cynical I am, and how much humility I lack.

This past Sunday, I attended Grace Bible Church in Houston with Leigh and her sister. This is a two-year old church that presently gathers in a large movie theater downtown (a stone's throw from Lakewood); it is an "off-shoot" of Second Baptist Church in Houston. I could not worship in this place ... and I promise that I tried. I simply could not. All the songs were led by a band in typical (almost "traditional" these days) praise and worship style. All the songs were popular ones: God of Wonders, Here is Our King, Beautiful One, King Eternal, Unchanging, etc. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with these songs. In fact, they are all good, and I have sung whole-heartedly to each one in the past, but when they are played the exact same way, back to back to back, and separated by quick prayers (all similar), a quick offering and then a sermon (another long one, timing out at around 40 minutes, which is better than last Tuesday's Austin Metro service, where the speaker preached five sermons in one over the course of an hour and fifteen minutes), forgive me, but I think something is missing.
Is this the future of the American evangelical church? Have we shredded eras of worship heritage, and created a much more succinct patchwork of liturgy, free of anything resembling ritual, meditation, beauty? As I said to Leigh, "I need more." I do not want to change Grace Bible Church, but I certainly would not want to worship there. For some people, P&W songs and a long, conversational sermon is all they need. For some people, that is worship. Not for me. I must have more.

There is no right way.

And one of the curses of going to seminary is that, whenever you share your opinion on such things, you are immediately (if not before the question) seen as either a snob or a cynical jerk. "Oh, you just say that because you went to seminary and you think you know everything about how it should be." I thought studying such things in seminary would help me speak to the condition of the church, but, ironically, because I studied such things my opinion is not desired. We fear change, I suppose. I fear change.

The long and the short of it is, I am wrong. I am cynical. I am not humble. Grace Bible Church is more right than I am. But even this understanding does not help the restlessness I feel with the present state of worship in the modern Church, and it doesn't keep me from despising myself for my attitude.

-----

Consternation #3: The Subtle Drift

Last night, Leigh, her sister, and I went to see Superman Returns (see farther below on sidebar for my grade). At one point, Lois (Kate Bosworth) and the Man of Steel (Brandon Routh) lift off into the sky on a romantic flight high over Metropolis. It is a tender moment, and whether or not it is a bit boring to watch means nothing regarding this observation. Lois, remembering her earlier days of gliding through the atmosphere with Superman, remarks as she draws closer to him, "I forgot how warm you are."

Almost the entire audience snickered. It was a suppressed, devious laugh exactly like the way one laughs at a sexual innuendo or misspoken euphemism. Granted, the line can indeed be taken two ways, but why does every one these days take the statement as "dirty." Why do our minds immediately call up something "naughty" rather than the memory of a comfortable, warm embrace. I believe that is what the line was originally meant to accomplish. I guess it should have been placed in a movie twenty years ago or so. Such a line is only crass comedy today, amidst America's subtle drift into perversion. Hmm, I sound like a fundamentalist ... Maybe I am.

But, if so, why aren't more churches interested in hiring me?

____

Images From the Last Two Months

May Truett grads who did it in three years!

Leigh and I at the Houston Astros vs. Texas Rangers game

My dogs, Gracie and Molly, sleeping where they're not supposed to be...

My mother with her Kindergarten class. She retired this past May after over 20 years teaching...

Being Happy

Love and Wonder

I don't remember exactly what my attitude was the morning of April 28, 2005. I do know that whatever little annoyance I was dealing with on that particular day, I was trying to suppress it quickly. So many days gust by us year after year, never to be revisited or recalled, and it is only a select few that remain with us, stored somewhere within for whatever reason. On that day, my mind was focused on one main thing, my scheduled interview for a position as an associate director of recruitment in the Truett Recruiting office. Nothing else was important; I wanted a job.

With only a few minutes before my interview, as I waited in the office at one of the computer desks, lazily making my normal rounds across the Internet, I came across something that indeed would, in hindsight, supersede any job interview, as well as any occupational event I might experience in my life. From the comment section under one of the posts in a blog I had only recently established, there sat, as innocent - and suspicious - as a dove, a short comment by someone identified only as "simchah."

"'...that whatever you love (writing, music, a certain someone, God) continue to fall, and may it never find a bottom.'"
wow that is good. did you write that?
fun to find a Texan on xanga! :)"

Now, a less pessimistic person would view this message, in which the last line of that post is quoted back to me, as a polite praise and a friendly greeting. I only saw the weird name, a tiny profile picture I could not make out, and read the comment as questioning whether I had written what I personally believed to be a great line ("That's gold! Gold, Jerry!"), or had plagiarized it from someone else. With seconds ticking away before my interview, I clicked on simchah's link, prepared to do cyber-battle, armed with my powerful, unplagiarized rhetoric ... and I looked upon a much larger display of her profile picture. Oh, I thought, she looks nice.

The next few months were as quickly moving and disorienting (once again in hindsight) as a whirlwind. Noticing that though she was presently located in New York, she had attended the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor and was from Houston, I commented back. She returned the sentiment. Then I, as innocent as a fox, e-mailed her. She replied again. Most endearing was how long her e-mails were. While they did not rival my epic-length e-mails (few can), they were quite large; she was not shy about professing and confessing her views. I do not mean to romanticize this to the point of syruppy sickness, but throughout May, June, and July, we had a bit of a You've Got Mail-thing going on.

The subsequent relationship that began (though it all seemed to happen in stages, the comments, the e-mails, the first phone call at the end of July, the first date at the end of August, the first kiss on the Brooklyn Bridge at the end of September ...) is made up of a host of golden days that rest somewhere deep within me. They continue to form me, changing me and reminding me of the very truth I was waking up to when I wrote that blog post over a year ago. Love ... and wonder. To be aware of these is to be in communion with the matchless grace of God.

Edit from my Xanga post of April 10, 2005 (two and a half weeks before the comment that changed my life):
Keep seeking those hidden depths - the chasm to which love and wonder can plummet just keeps opening. May my wish for me be for you as well, that whatever you love and whatever fills you with wonder (writing, music, a certain someone, God) continue to fall, and may it never find a bottom.



I love you forever, Leigh.

Extinguished

It is finished.

Jesus is captured. He is rejected. He is despised. He is mocked.

The Lord, the Christ, has taken upon himself the sins of the world. As man, he is the only one who stands outside the arena of guilt and rebellion in which we all are gathered. As God, he puts aside all that it means to be God (power, glory, justice, reign, sovereignty) and steps silently into this savage arena. With only whispered words, fragments of a holy conversation lost on the ears of all who surround him, he subjects himself to our brutal, impatient violence. We pour out upon him all our misguided wrath, and as it was foreshadowed by prophets, such undeserved punishment pleases the Creator, who in misery and sorrowful acceptance, stays his hand from turning back upon us the wrath we gleefully pour out.

It is finished.

Jesus is stricken. He is wounded. He is bruised. He is pierced.

The Lord, the Christ, bows his head and enters a place no god would dare trod. He gives himself over to those who could never foresee, do not comprehend, and perhaps still will never understand who he is, and what he has done. Saturated with our spit, soggy with his own blood, torn and flayed, no one in this dark arena sees the mystery. Before our eyes, manifested, incarnated, is the Mystery of Grace. It is a mystery he dies. It is a mystery he allows a single blow to land upon him, allows but one hand to arrest him, yoke him. It is a mystery he enters this arena in the first place.

It is finished.

Jesus is dead. The Christ is dead. The Lord is dead. Our God is dead.

The Lord, the Christ, is laid in a tomb. The sky over the arena is black. A peal of thunder, and we who inhabit the arena could swear we hear the anguished roar of the Creator. Our tumult settles. The din falls silent. We witness a stone heaved over the tomb and sealed. The choked, dying words descends upon the arena floor: "It ... is ... finished." We answer with whispers choked with our shock. What have we done? And yet, this day is Good. This is Good Friday. The Mystery of Grace is dead, yet lingers. Like a fog refusing to dissipate, we are surrounded by tragedy mixed with wonder, grief mixed with reverence, guilt mixed with awe.

It is finished.

The lights fade and go out. The candles are extinguished. All is dark.

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

- Bernard of Clairvaux