Hopeless Wanderer

Two things are really surfacing about myself as I get older. First, I am an incredibly sincere, intense person when it comes to identity and relationships. Honesty and transparency are my policies. I experience life deeply and emotionally and share my experiences with others. I am begrudgingly accepting that I can be pretty dramatic, and I think this is largely driven by the fact that I largely feel the full range of emotions at full volume. Second, I am incredibly goofy, satirical, and insincere when I'm being irreverent. I think this can be very confusing for the people around me and sometimes leaves them with the wrong impression of who I am, but that's another post for another time.

The first of the above qualities has driven my love for Mumford & Sons. If you go through this blog post by post, their presence may be the most pervasive item other than the word "I." Marcus Mumford writes incredibly personal lyrics within the context of larger, universal human experiences. I feel deep joy and sorrow when I listen to many of the songs he's written. The ones that I hold closest all have a story in my life closely related to them. They constantly tell the story of a flawed man striving to be his best. On top of all that, I think the songs Sigh No More and The Cave, when listened to back to back, provide the best 6:04 of running music in the history of ever.

When my friend Andrew (See #3. Although I reread the whole thing and I thoroughly entertained myself) sent me an email raving about Mumford's new Hopeless Wanderer video, I imagined something like this:

(This video may as well be a giant pile of onions for me to chop. It makes me cry so hard that I'm dehydrated when I'm done. Has anyone yet figured out why our faces' response to being upset is to void itself of all fluids?)

Hopeless Wanderer is an intense track and also one of my favorites on Babel. Just as I think Mumford is about to further indulge my inner (and outer?) teenage drama queen, they throw this at us:

Mumford, you just get me.

Momma Barnes Update: Conclusion

I've generally made it my policy that when something big happens in my life, I write about it and share it. In the past week or so, I've seen page views on this blog spike. I'm sure that people in my life who know I've lost my mother are wondering what I have to say about it. The problem is that blogs by nature feel like a self-promotional medium. I took my name out of the title of my blog a year and a half ago for this very reason. Even so, I'm writing about my experiences, my feelings, my perspective.

My Momma passed away last week. I want her and The Lord to be served in anything that I have to say here. The problem is, what the hell does one say in such a circumstance? In the past several weeks, I have struggled to figure out how to frame so many messages to so many people. How does one go about communicating the death of one's mother to those beyond the closest of friends and family.

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to speak at my mother's memorial service. The following are the notes  which largely drove what I shared on this occasion. I hope you enjoy them and I hope that they give you insight as to how wonderful my mother is, and how I, my family, and my savior feel about her.

Since my momma got sick, she’s become a big fan of trashy reality television. I am not that big a fan of trashy reality television. This lead to a sort of awkward one-sided tension as we hung out in her hospital room a couple weeks ago. She was perfectly happy watching her shows while she thought I sat at her bedside and read a book. Little did she know, I wasn’t actually reading at all. I was sitting with a book in my hand, completely incapable of focusing while the irresistibly addictive sounds and images of Say Yes to the Dress and Flip This House were projected from her tv. I didn’t judge my mother for her choice of entertainment because I knew that she was too weak to read, but I still would rather have been doing something else.

                After working my courage up for a day or so, I asked my mother if she would mind if I read to her. I had just finished reading the Magician’s Nephew from the Chronicles of Narnia and was starting on the Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe. This felt like the perfect book for the occasion, it would be fairly easy to read out loud, I knew we could finish it before her time was up in the hospital, and I find C.S. Lewis to be a lot of fun to read. It turned out that my nerves over asking m y mother to read to her were completely unfounded. She loved it. We had a wonderful time. She loved the way Lewis wrote and I felt a deep peaceful joy as she gazed in childlike wonder while I read to her. We only got five chapters in before she was put under a heavy dose of drugs for a procedure, after which I really never had more than a few lucid minutes with her at a time. Despite this fact, I can’t think of many things that bring me more joy than looking back on that time and I feel confident that she now knows the end of this story although I was unable to finish it with her.

                This is the source of so much of our heartbreak as a community that knew her. We know the strength of her faith and we know the place where she currently resides. With this joyful knowledge, it’s the unfinished stories that leave us wishing she was still with us. Apart from the one Lewis wrote, there are so many that I wanted to write and that I’m sure so many of you wanted to write. We hoped she would be around to see the conclusions to these stories.

The wonderful thing is that God feels this sadness with us. In the Magician’s Nephew, a little boy brings concern over his mother’s health to Aslan, the great Lion who spoke Narnia into being with his breath and song.

Digory Cries:

“But Please, please – won’t you-can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life.  For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his mother than he was himself.

                “My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another. But I thave to think of hundreds of years in the life of Narnia.”

We cannot conceive of why we had to lose our mother or why we had to lose her in the manner in which we did. However, I know our creator grieves with us and must be concerned about the whole of the good of creation in every decision he makes.

The story of Jesus raising Lazarus is another example of the emotional availability of our God who mom served so faithfully. We all know about the miracle that occurs as Lazarus is raised from the dead, but I believe the most revealing part of this story occurs before Lazarus is raised. Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus saying, “He whom you love is ill.” By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus is dead. Jesus knew he had the power to raise Lazarus, but just the same, his heart aches over he whom he loves and it aches for his friends who miss Lazarus. Here we come to my favorite part of the story, the shortest and one of the most poignant verses in scripture. John 11:35 tells us, Jesus wept. Jesus did not look ahead to the miracle he was about to perform, nor did he use the grandiosity of his creation and plan to explain away his friends’ pain. He understood the anguish of that moment. He sympathized, he empathized, he wept. I find great consolation in the fact that my savior weeps with me. Although he’s called her to glory, he weeps for my mother’s sickness, he weeps for her death, and he weeps for those of us left behind, missing her. He weeps because he loves us.

                The story of creation and everything that has happened since is a story of love. God created us and he was in love with us from the very beginning. We, his bride, turned away from him and he has chased us as a groom truly in love. There is a French easter liturgy, for which the translation is, “The love of God is folly!.” God has constructed so many bridges by which we could return to him, the final being the sacrifice of his son on the cross.

                Although I can say these words, I have always struggled to understand the depth and breadth of the Lord’s love for me. God feels too distant, too big, too ethereal.  Because she was a human being walking on this earth with me, I find it easier to understand my mother’s love for me.  It has become clearer and clearer in recent months that she totally adores me. She thinks I’m incredible, she thinks I’m amazing. She finds me worthy of love and takes joy in loving me.  Mom is with The Lord in her home now. Because she is next to him and she loves me way she does, it is now easier for me to understand God’s love for me.

                The one person that my mother loved more than my brothers and myself is my father. It’s become inescapable to me recently that over the past 30 years, I have been privileged to witness a tremendous love story between two Godly, caring, dynamic people. They have fulfilled God’s purpose in each other’s lives as they have loved each other intensely and tenderly and driven each other to more closely resemble Him. As my mother got sicker, I witnessed my earthly father’s love and care for my mother. He adores her and wants little more than to be with her.

                There is one whose love for my mother is greater than my earthly father’s still. That is my heavenly Father.  As her earthly body was broken and beaten, we heard the Lord calling her to come home as the beloved does in Song of Solomon 2:10-14. I believe that the creator of the universe called my mother home using the following words:

My beloved speaks to me and says to me

“Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away,

For behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come,

And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth a fragrance.

Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.

Oh my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff,

Let me see your face, let me hear your voice,

For your voice is sweet and your face is lovely"

My savior is desperately in love with my mother. Far more in love than any of us can be.  Five days ago, my mother and my savior were united in their tremendous love for one another.

My savior does not love my mother for anything she did. He merely loves her because she exists and is his. This love has compelled her to be the woman we are all here to celebrate.

A favorite band of mine from College wrote a song about a friend called Elias. The song is about love and separation. It’s about loving someone deeply across a great distance. This is something  we’ll all now have to learn to do for a time. There is a bridge in the song that makes me think of my brothers and me. The lyrics have become increasingly important to me as my mother’s sickness has progressed.

I see your wife she stands stooped over by the fire outside

And I see your boys and when they look up

You know I think they got their mothers’ eyes

She looks so proud, she looks so happy

She looks so proud, she looks so happy

My prayer as my mother has departed this earth is that my father, my brothers and I would have my mothers’ eyes. Not the deep, brown eyes that I received from my mother, but eyes that view the world as an opportunity for service and worship. Eyes that see every person who walks into our lives as someone whom we are meant to serve. I pray that we’ll make her proud. I pray that we’ll make her happy. I pray that we’ll bring glory to her beloved.

Now/Here

I wrote this post in the airport on my way down to Haiti about eleven days ago. I had connectivity issues, so I haven't been able to post it till now. This was the attitude and approach I wanted to keep at the front of my mind while in Haiti. Some moments I succeeded and some I didn't, but that's just part of the process.

Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning has continued to bless me as I have pored over and considered not only trust, but some other concepts and themes he presents.

One of the points Manning focuses on is the concept of now/here. I struggle with attention. My mind is always somewhere else. Whether I'm daydreaming, philosophizing or thinking to the future, I very rarely live in the moment. I'm the type of person who struggles to listen to what people have to say because I am busy formulating my next response. As a result, I've been caught many times being inattentive and absent-minded, sometimes with disastrous consequences.


For some time now, I've been familiar with the concept of making everything that we do in life an act of worship. So the thought goes that no task is so small that God cannot be glorified in it's doing. I like the idea of making everything that I do an act of worship, but how do we do this? What does it really mean?

A great place to start is now/here. Manning shares the anecdote of a man who is visiting the home of a Buddhist monk and having dinner with him. As the meal concludes, the guest urges the monk to allow him to do the dishes. In doing so, the man desires to thank the monk for preparing the meal and also to get the dishes done as quickly as he can so that they can "get on with their evening." The monk responds that the guest may not do the dishes because he will not do them right. The guest asks how a person could possibly do the dishes wrong, and the monk responds that he will be doing the dishes to move onto the next thing. In order to correctly do the dishes, one must do the dishes merely to do the dishes.
  

Every person, every task, every moment deserves our full attention. Being now/here is being nowhere except where you are, physically, intellectually, emotionally spiritually.

The story of Jesus raising Lazarus is an incredibly powerful one. This is a story where we truly see Jesus as fully God and fully man. Jesus shows up late. This is a point in time when his friends believe in his power to heal but do not yet understand that he holds power over life and death. Jesus commiserates with his grieving friends as they mourn the loss of their beloved, His beloved, Lazarus. Let me say that again, Jesus feels sorrow with his friends. Here we see the shortest and one of the most powerful verses in the Bible: Jesus wept. Jesus knew full well that he was about to raise Lazarus in this moment. He knew that this death and separation were merely temporary.

 
I never fully realized the significance of this moment until I read Ruthless Trust. Jesus doesn't look around and say, "Hey guys, pipe down for a second. I gotta get psyched up to do something really cool. I think you're gonna dig it." He also doesn't say, "Quit your crying, weepy whiners. I'm going to raise Lazarus and reunite you guys in just a few minutes." He doesn't give some lame Christianese answer about how all things work together for His glory and He's the shepherd of his flock, so everyone should just accept their loss with a dull smile on their face and move on.

 
Jesus Wept!

 
Despite his infinite knowledge and power, despite the fact that his father lives outside of time, Jesus is now/here with his friends. He feels intense sadness, sympathy, empathy, pain. Jesus didn't smile and shrug it off, Jesus didn't sniffle. Jesus wept.

What a testament to being now/here! What a statement on being nowhere, save for where you are! I'm praying that I can strive to be like Christ in this way. I am praying that I can focus on my God, the people, the tasks, the moment that lie right in front of me at all times. It's a tall order, but I believe it is a beautiful act of worship.

Happy New Year

For some, 2012 was the best year ever. Some are just thankful that it's over. Either way, the end of a year and the beginning of another certainly provides a symbolic line of demarcation that many grasp and claim as time for a change.

Every single day that the sun rises offers this sort of opportunity. Even better, every moment of our lives beckons us to make better decisions, care better for others and add something of beauty and substance to creation. How much moreso a day when the whole world is beginning something new?

You may be on the mountain top right now, looking back down at 2012 with joy, peace and thankfulness, looking forward to 2013 with hope, assurance and anticipation. You may also be in the valley, looking back with sadness, disappointment, and questioning, forward with fear, confusion and anxiety. In whichever camp you fall, you're still carrying some brokenness, some kind of doubt, offense, anger, or self-questioning. Leave it. It's poison. Let 2012 have it. That's what grace is all about.

This song is beautiful. It's about new beginnings. It's about rejecting the darkness in our lives, investing all we can and looking to the future with hope. It makes me want to dance. And it's hard to dance with the devil on your back.


 I'm not sure all these lyrics are correct. But I wasn't a real big fan of the actual music video.

Trust

I'm currently reading Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning. Manning's Abba's Child was an incredibly influential book in the development of my faith and also provided me with a quotation that I ultimately had tattooed on my arm, a constant reminder of grace, the thing I should be most grateful for in my life and the thing I should also be most willing to give freely. Ruthless Trust seems to be just the right message at the right time in my life, much like Abba's Child was at the time. Manning's writing is beautiful, truthful, humble and hewn from pain and an intimate knowledge of brokenness and grace. This anecdote has been in my head for days:

"When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at "the house of the dying" in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, "And what can I do for you?" Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
     "What do you want me to pray for?" she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: "Pray that I have clarity."
     She said firmly, "No, I will not do that." When he asked her why, she said, "Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of." When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, "I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.""

As human beings, we crave clarity. Whether it be reasons or explanations for the events in our life, or whether it be the affirmation of being told, "Well done, my good and faithful servant," we have a deep need to know with some degree of certainty that we are headed down the right path. For those of us who choose to believe in God, He is the most profound, unimaginably comprehending being in our life. Therefore, it is from Him Who we most greatly desire clarity.

I have heard the voice of God before. It was not a booming voice in the dead of night. It has been an ethereal feeling I had when going about my day to day. It has been the smile of families in a poor neighborhood. It has been a deep knowing peace. It has been a series of events constructed that led me to know I was in the right place. It's been not hearing with my ears, but hearing with my soul and mind an inaudible but penetrating voice.

I've been listening for the voice of God a lot lately and I haven't been hearing much. Part of the reason I have been listening so closely for him because I have been waiting for confirmation that I have made good decisions. Like John in the preceding story, I want clarity. I, and I think many others like me, relate God's silence to failure. We see God as a father who is often disappointed in us and whose stern, wordless looks confirm our failures.

This is not God. God is a loving father who shines light on us simply through turning his face in our direction. His radiance is so great that we're best off if we can only see His back. A mentor advised me that God is just silent sometimes and these moments provide us with opportunities to build our trust up in Him. Sometimes God speaks to us and sometimes He trusts us to live life for His Glory. The very least we can do is return the favor. Seeking clarity is putting the cart before the horse. If we yearn to seek implicit and enduring trust in God, clarity will come.

Anthem

No, not the story by Ayn Rand. For better or worse, sometimes songs just resonate with me. I heard this song about a billion times and it never really did much for me. On the billion and first, though, it became my anthem. I'm not quite sure why I love it so much, but I do. There are a couple lines that I think a lot of us can identify with from time to time. Just try turning it on loud and not singing along and dancing. Fast forward to the two minute mark to get to the music.

Perspective Change

There are many facts in life, some are good and some are bad. Regardless of their nature, we must accept them. However, we have a choice which ones we would like to embrace and allow to shape our countenance. It's best if we embrace the good.

This song came on the radio this morning. I've heard it dozens of times. There was something different about it this morning. I've always heard it as a statement of devotion and commitment to another person, a love song to which we do not know the end. Today, the message was different. As I drove down the road singing the lyrics, I chose to view it as a prayer to God. I think it's better this way.