Deep Calls to Deep

I have never been to the Niagara Falls. I hear, though, that it is something to behold. I have heard that the roar is deafening, that when you stand on the look-out rails, even those several hundred feet from the bottom of the falls, you get soaked by the spray. I’ve never been, but I want to go. Someday, I will. And I think that I will break down weeping when I do.

In the deafening roar, in the blinding spray, there is an untamed wildness, a primal power that somehow calls me. The stories I’ve read of people hurling themselves over the falls in barrels – I understand that. Not that I would do that, trust me, but there is something in me that wants to be thrown into that – to be consumed, overwhelmed, defeated, plundered, and washed away, swept away.

I think if I visited there, I would understand better the Psalmist who wrote that “deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls” (Psalm 42).

Most of my days, I stand at the look-out tower and peer into the depths. I am enamored, enchanted, in love with the idea of loving God. And I have discovered that if I stand close enough, I can still hear the roar, feel the tremble, get soaked by the spray. But, I am never plunged into the Water.

I think God is a lot like that. And I think that His constant invitation and calling is for us to plunge in. He’s not promising us safe waters, or an easy time at it, but He is promising us life. The promise is that our thirst will be quenched, our souls filled, our hearts resurrected, even as we are crushed and swept away by his “reckless, raging, furious” love.

Living the life of God, or living life with God, is I think a lot like the scene in one of Monty Python’s movies. Jesus is talking to the crowds, and a couple in the back can’t quite make out what he is saying. One of them utters, “Blessed are the cheesemakers?” It’s the spray, not the rushing, pounding waters – the scraps, not the banquet table, we find ourselves in when we just stand at the perimeter and not press in, when we come to the edge and not jump off.

There is a great image in C.S. Lewis’s “A Horse and His Boy” when Wihn, a talking horse from Narnia, finally meets up with Aslan. Thinking him not really a lion, or at least a nice, tame one like so many have told her, she can’t imagine how big, how glorious, and how dangerously beautiful he is until he appears before her. Trembling, she approaches him and says with a quivering voice, “If you must eat one of us, please, eat me. I would sooner be eaten by you than fed by any other.”

And that is, I think, the experience of all of us rough and ragged ones who finally meet up, face to face, with the Lover of our Souls. We are left naked, alone, surrounded by a circle of stones fallen from accusing hands and some scribbling in the sand, facing a Savior who looks at us with eyes deep and knowing, hearing Him say, “Go now, and sin no more.” We are just amazed to even be alive. We are confused and wonder, “Could this really be the Messiah – He knew everything about me and still offered to me something I’ve never had,” and leave our own water buckets to run back to our villages, full of hope and wonder. We find our hearts burning within us, because somehow, in ways deeper than words, we realize we knew all along He was really here with us, right beside us, more alive than we ever dreamed he could be. We are blinded by Light, and then we see that we were always blinded, and it is now that we really see. We are caught in a Storm so wild, but find all we have to hold onto is all there ever really was. In awe, in wonder, stupefied, and blown to dust we saunter up wobbly-kneed, and with a rapidly beating heart say the only thing that can come out of our mouths, out of our hearts, “I would sooner be eaten by You than fed by any other; I would rather be crushed in Your hands than whole in desert lands.”

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
–Psalm 42:7

Keeping it Safe

Yesterday afternoon I was coming home from the Y, alone, and it hit me that I keep myself from relationships a lot. I keep myself safe from people in different ways. From my wife, from my friends, from my God. There's a lot of mystery in relationships, and I've been hurt so many times before. It feels crazy to open myself up to others. And so, I often hide in cynicism or judgment, becoming one of those critics standing outside the fire instead of the man in the arena, his face marred with blood and sweat and dust, striving valiantly.

I've been living life far too safely. I'm sick of that. I want to feel again, and live. I want to know the deep pain of having loved the hell out of people. I want to feel the hard rock beneath my boots and the soft dirt in my hands. I want to remember what it's like to lay my head down at night exhausted, ready for a full night's sleep after hours of having lived an adventurous, sunburned day. I want to shed all the plastic, K-Mart versions of life out there, those mirages in a desert of desire, and instead set out again toward the sea, that scandalous scent of salt air guiding me and hope burning in my heart like a raging fire in the night and the joy of the Great Reunion ever before me. I want to know Christ, really know Him, as the intimate friend He calls me, overwhelmed by the love He lavishes and awed by the way He lives and loves and pierced by the Invitation to do the same alongside this Lover so true. And to be known by Him - ah, to come totally out of hiding and into the Light. To really fall into that jaw-dropping truth that He knows my heart and He knows my soul, knows my coming and going, that He knows it all, and He desires me still more than anyone ever could.

Staying Alive

I watched some of The Last of the Mohicans over lunch today. The tape was already poised at the waterfall scene. Seeing Nathaniel's intensity as he squared Cora in the eyes and commanded her to "stay alive" hit something solid in me, and I broke down weeping. I am in two places at once: I am Cora, watching as my Rescuer leaves but with the promise for my ransom and return to take me back. And I'm also Nathaniel - or, at least, want to be: a man with steetly determination, courage, vigor, life, here to rescue the beloved wherever she may be held captive, "no matter how long it takes, no matter how far." To come after her, to find her, to win her back.

And that's what makes me come alive. I've never felt more alive than when I am living from my heart for the hearts of others, pouring out my heart and soul that others may go free. Why do the important things fade so quickly? Why does Reality seem to darken, as if I were losing precious blood from some hidden wound or gasping for air after being slammed in the chest, and so my days are defined lately by struggling just to breath and raging, as the poem puts so well, "against the dying of the light"?

It's been almost non-stop since January, this battle. And the Enemy - the Thief... it's like that game I played when I was a boy where I put something in my hand, clenched tight my fist, and then held it out to someone smaller, like my little cousin, and dared him to try to break open my fist and retrieve the prize. And sometimes I would feel that he was winning, and my fist is opening up and I can't do anything to stop it, except maybe grab it with my other hand or just try running away from the offender (surprised, all the while, that he had the strength to do that afterall). Something precious is being stolen... I can feel it. And I'm desperate that it not be.

Holy Spirit, give me the gut-level courage to abide in You this day, to stand in You, to submit to You, to learn of You, to watch You, to be loved by You, and to resist Your enemy and mine.

Waking the Heart

The business of busyness

I feel so busy lately. Busyness. The business of busyness. It’s like a distant relative that one day shows up at your door, and you feel obligated to let him in. “Just for the night,” he promises, lugging behind him his old leathery bags full of laundry long due for a wash, a few aluminum cans, and some miscellaneous knick-knacks he’s accrued along the way. What can you say? Of course you’ll let him in. After all, he’s an old familiar face, though for the life of you you can’t remember his first name.

One night turns into two, two nights into a week, a week into a month – how long now? It’s his voice, the baritone monotone deafened-tone bellowing that grates at you, but whose noise you can’t seem to speak above. He’s taken over now not just the spare bedroom, but almost the entire house. You’ve had to retreat now to a corner of it. You’ve kicked him out several times, you think, but you were never really able to hear yourself saying it above his clamoring for attention, his neediness and distracting. You try again, louder this time. But he stays, and he lounges himself across the furniture and smears his own grease all over the house.

Tsk Tsk (Tĭsk Tąsk)

Even this journal entry cracks me up. I’m typing it. Typing it, right here on my computer screen at work. I have other programs running in the background. Programs. I’m “multitasking,” as they call it, because I cannot stop even for a few minutes and steal away to a quiet place to breathe. I can only give my heart the room it needs to stretch and yawn and awaken within the confines of a plastic keyboard and glaring monitor. And it begins to slowly feel like a Hollywood version of an insane ward – sanitized, stale, bland. Devoid of creativity or energy or passion or spontaneity or fiery strength. Just… stagnant.

Last night my muscles wouldn’t stop cramping. I could hardly sleep all night. I’d get up to stretch them, and that seemed to help for an hour or so, before I’d need to get up again and walk around the apartment. I was really tired, but still felt like taking a jog might relieve some of the tension. My legs felt like coiled springs that needed release.

That’s the state of my own heart. And really, some of the busyness that shows up at my door isn’t really bad at all. There are good things out there that I have secretly desired for a long time to give a swing at – expressions and worship and giftings taken flight. At times, though, they have a way of nagging at me, attaching themselves like tentacles or smothering vines to that coiled spring within, until full release no longer becomes possible and the aim becomes askew. It’s like mistletoe, legendary for its association with Christmastime romance and long used to decorate dancehalls and fireplace-lit living rooms, but whose real existence is as an energy-draining parasitic plant that attaches itself to (and cannot live apart from) another living organism to derive its mineral nutrients and water. Naturally, it’s a perfect design, a balancing act between tree and plant that offers both what they need. But mismanaged, or introduced to the wrong environment, a mistletoe plant can destroy its host, and kill itself in the process. And where is the romance in a bit of splintered, rotted-out, mushroom-infested tree – once glorious while it stood, now fallen and shattered and dead.

The Violence of Reality

And let me just say now for my own heart’s sake some inkling of truth that is always stolen away from me so quickly. Giving room for my heart to stand up and stretch and awaken will not equate to opportunity or meaning. Meaning and purpose aren’t found in my heart coming alive. Rather, it’s simply that my heart will never find meaning and purpose without first waking from its cramping, restless slumber. My heart coming alive isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. It’s the starting-off place. In order to live – which necessarily involves journey and battle – my heart must come awake.

The Kingdom is at hand, no doubt. Living in it requires a fierce and steely intention. “Violent men,” said Jesus, “take [the kingdom] by force.” Not half-alive, half-engaged, sleepy men. Violent ones. Ones alive with great emotional force, intense with conviction, propelled into life with God by the reality of their insatiable hunger for Him.

Jesus, this is you: the most violent and fully alive man ever to have walked this earth, who now walks the lands of heaven and of my own heart. Dwell here. Awaken me to take my place in you, with you. Rescue me from the busyness of it all and settle me into the life you’ve desired for me since the foundations of the earth. That’s what I want.