Seeing Thestrals*

Now forgive me for being morbid, but for the last month or so there's something I've wanted to process out loud. It's something that will make most of us not want to read any further, so ingrained is our avoidance of the clear reality of each of our lives. It's about facing grief, loss and the inevitability of the universal constant of 'the end'.

Death's not all bad. Don't get me wrong, it's painful in layers that i never even knew were there, but I'm coming to see that it adds lavish depth to the colors of our lives. I've been thinking of it as an intensity, a vibrancy even, in each life-picture that comes as a result of including the sumptuousness of rich dark shadows. Without the shadows the image is flat, lifeless almost.

These thoughts don't come out of nowhere, obviously. I've just navigated another first. Father's Day without a father. It also happened to be his birthday. Not an easy season. No standing in the card aisle for me this year, awkwardly trying to pick just the right phrase that said not too much or not too little. There's a strange kind of loss even in foregoing sad little rituals isn't there? And then there's coming home yesterday to a mum who's had her double bed moved out and is now sleeping in a single surrounded by photos of together times. It hurts my heart. But it's not just our family's pot of loss, there's more.

Every Wednesday morning I knock on the doors of people's crisis. I enter a time-locked moment where they no longer have control. Somehow a giant PAUSE button got clicked without their consent. It seems to have caught me off-guard, but I have not yet met a patient who believes they ought to be lying in a hospital bed, staring at the ceiling. The light-box of hospitalization simply highlights their confusion. No-one deserves their lot. I've lost track of the number of bedridden people that insist they are really healthy. Shocked that their bodies are not behaving according the the script they made up in their heads. Illness, injury, accident, death are entirely rude. Inconsiderately spontaneous.

But here's the thing. Here's the benefits of seeing thestrals. We are fast-tracked into reality without the option of remaining unthinkingly impassive to the fact that we are physically temporal, limited beings. It astounds me how I choose to navigate life with the made-up notion that the universe exists for my personal happiness and benefit, and that I am in control of my destiny. It doesn't. I am not. Ask anyone who has stared at a ceiling with an IV in their arm, or who has followed a loved one as they've been wheeled down the corridor into ICU, or who has picked up 'that call'.

We do have every right to ignore the thestrals, to live in a make believe world of our own choosing. It's probably paler (in a pastel colors kind of way). But then we also have the right, if we're brave enough, honest enough, to maybe choose to live every day alive, right into the corners. Shadows and all.


*thestrals - for those who haven't read the Harry Potter series, are magical creatures that can only be seen by those who have watched death in action. To all others they are invisible.

ANGRY PROPHETS ::

It has to be the first time in my life that when reading Isaiah my attention was caught and transfixed, not on what I thought I would find (angry old shouty Isaiah, lambasting the wretched Israelites for their sin and unfaithfulness), but on the God who’s message he brought.

I am captured, captivated, torn and tearful reading the words of love, of unashamed devotion that God has for his people. It is almost too much. The promises of help. The commitment to renewal, restoration. Speaking to their fears with hope and unending, undeserved love. Reading the words, it feels like I have stumbled across a lover’s letter, it is tender and intimate. I hardly know this God, and yet here he is, revealing himself to me.

17.5 million people...7 on the beach

It strikes me as rather absurd that in a city that is cradled by snow-capped mountains and washed on it's verges by the Pacific ocean, that we are so busy doing 'life' that we forget to live. It is only because Phil is doing a Saturday class, that I have for the first time since I can't even remember, set foot on the beach 45 minutes from our house.

There was the rhythmic silence of the pounding surf and the cries of overhead pelicans. The distant splashing of seals in the sparkling water, and lazy sailboats thinking about making the trip to a fog shrouded Catalina Island. It was a place forgotten by people who have too much to do to notice the clouds pass overhead, too much to do to listen to the kids giggling madly as they run from the breakers.

For two hours I stopped. Thank God. Each breath of the salty air brought a measure of calm, of healing, of presence. I sat simply soaking in the bright detail of every grain, every broken shell, every particle of the Sabbath moment I was in, and somewhere in my crushed little soul I felt deeply alive.

Really?

"Do you really love Jesus? No, really. If you look at the last week of your life, the choices you've made the things that you've said, could you really say that you love Jesus?"

It was the first thing Dave Feiser said to me last week. Cut to last night. Mike Erre at Rock Harbor...

"So if we say we love Jesus, and we've sung a hundred thousand worship songs and we tell everyone that we're living our lives in the light of his teachings...then let me ask when it was that we last picked up the Bible and, for ourselves - not for class, not for credit - just leafed through, read and reflected on the only four attested accounts of his life and teaching? We say we follow him, we say we love him, do we really even know him?"

...

Now this isn't some kind of self induced guilt trip, some 'try harder' moment. This is one of those points in time where lucidity and clarity rule. Where the inconsistency of my private life and my public self are uncomfortably sharing the same seat. I don't like it. At all. I am a hypocrite, an actor. I want to follow Jesus, I am convinced by the historical truth of him, and compelled by the reality of his existence and person. I want to follow him, to relate to him, but my relationship is anemic.

Sam asked last night if it was one of the ten commandments to read your Bible and pray every day. "No" I said, "It would be a bit odd if just because I was your mum I made a law that said that you had to speak to me every day. It's not a law, it's just something you do when you have a relationship with God, because you want to spend time with Him, knowing what he knows, learning to live and love like does." Then I heard myself.

I heard that to know and not to do is not to know. I agree. I want to know. So, not in some sense of legalistic weirdness, but in an attempt to know Jesus for myself, so that I can love him, follow his teaching, live out his love, I want to spend time, commit to spend time with him. (OK, so I know some of you might be shocked that having moved half way across the world to obey God's call, it is not my practice to be faithful in daily spending uninterrupted moments with our God. Well, please accept the broken truth of me.)

In order to help me focus on this commitment, I am planning every Tuesday morning this semester, from about 8:45am, to read and pray sat outside the Talbot lounge. It's going in my planner this morning. If anyone out there wants to gather, not to talk, not to chat, simply to be together reading, journalling, praying, in an openness to hear from the Spirit of God, through the life of Jesus, by word of God, then you are more than welcome!

I did not come to seminary to stuff my head full of facts about God, I came to have my life shaped by him. Sadly I've found that sometimes his intentions for me get overlooked in the business of being Christians rather than the business of following Christ. This semester, God help me, I plan on following Jesus. Really.

Business as a calling: Part 1 Are we asking the wrong question?

I recently had to write a paper on business as a calling. I was a little surprised at how passionately I felt about the subject seeing as it is 18 months since I left Procter & Gamble. The question that the paper posed was whether the business world is an appropriate environment for a Christian to be called into.

While reading for the essay I was struck by how many books there are on Christians and the workplace that focus on the question "What is my calling?". But is that the right question? I don't believe that it is, and actually it reveals a deep rooted misconception about the nature of calling. When we become a Christian we are called. At that precise moment our calling for our entire life is clarified, we are to be a follower of Christ, a disciple. By disciple I mean as defined in Matt 28, someone who lives in obedience to all that Christ has commanded. This is fully orbed discipleship that is not just focused on evangelism, but on living a life that is pleasing to God in every aspect, including how we work.

So being a suitably argumentative soul I redefined the question for the essay. The question is not what is my calling, but where is my calling to be exercised? In other words our calling is clear, it is the context that needs to be clarified. All this might sound like hairsplitting over semantics but it is much more significant than that. It may not be a conscious decision, but at some level asking the wrong question drives us to make a false distinction between our spiritual life and our work life. It makes it possible for our workplace to be a context where we do not feel "called" where in reality it is. Oddly enough that is the very thing that many of these books are trying to argue against.

Starting with the right question is important, but what about the answer? As I worked through the essay I came to the conclusion that the business world is an excellent context to pursue the call to discipleship in. I'll try and chop up my essay into some bite sized chunks over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully some of you will find it useful...

Back to school

Well it's 8am and Labor Day (which, ironically means that no-one is working!) anyhoo...Phil and I are back into the Fall semester as of Wednesday gone, Eve is now fully immersed in her new pre-school in the mornings, and Sam goes back to school on Thursday! Yes, for the more astute, you'll realize that this week will be a touch tricky, but have no fear...Sam will be taking Exegesis in the Epistles with Professor Clint Arnold to pass the time of day, nothing like a bit of Greek to prep you for 3rd grade :o)

I took our lovely 2 out for an orange juice yesterday and asked them what the best bit of the summer has been. We walked through all the visitors, family and friends, then all the day trips and holiday clubs, oddities and Olympics, but out of eleven weeks of school drought and summer fun we have a final winner...(drum roll please!) And the winner is, a tie between;

• Taking Aunty Heather and Uncle Adrian to Chuck-E-Cheese, and
  
• our road trip to Pismo Beach, all on our very own.

Even talking about those two events made them giggle insanely, it was so sweet. So, now that we have some closure on the happy memories (though they won't be forgotten soon), we're moving on again to investing ourselves in; our studies, wholehearted community at seminary, at church and within our college LIFEgroups. September looks busy, very busy, but also very exciting. It starts today with an open house for all Talbot students; grill on, drinks chilling, picnic blankets out on the lawn and a big old smiles on our faces...roll on Autumn.

Sam's school autobiography project :o)

Sam wrote the following summary of his life so far for his school project, which he presented to the class (along with everyone else) and got great feedback. Well done Sam!

All about ME! Hi my name is Sam Jensen. I am nearly 8 years old. I was born in Newcastle, England, on July 15th 2000 at 4.20pm. My favorite color is yellow, a very bright yellow. My favorite food is ham and pineapple pizza, it’s so tasty I can’t describe it. My favorite TV shows are Ben10 and SpongeBob. The very best holiday was when I went to France in a tent with some of my family and friends, with a swimming pool close to us. It rained on the tent at night and I really liked it because the sound made me drift off to sleep. I am scared of the dark but my red alien light makes me think about other things. What I really like about my family is that we have great times and we usually have fun together. My mum and dad are the best chefs in the world. We have a swing in our back yard and I like sitting on it, eating ice cream. My friends names are Drayke, Michael, Matthew, Madison, Carina, Jacob, James, Charlie and a whole other bunch here, and some others in England. I have a sister named Eve, she is a very playful child. We both like doing gymnastics, it is a lot of fun. My mum has a little garden in the back that we get food from. My favorite comic is the Beano, so I have a Beano room - I like it so much! My Beano arrives every 3 weeks on Thursdays. I am having a lot of fun here in America, I miss my friends too though, but the flight here was worth it. It is very different from England, but I really like it.
When I grow up… When I grow up I would like to be a swimming teacher or a karate teacher. I really like fighting (pretend) which is why I like karate. I like swimming because it is fun to do and after my lessons I get to jump of the board and splash around. When I grow up I would like to live in England because they have cool parks as well as great playgrounds. There are also things I would like to learn, like how to water-ski and how to ride a jet-ski. When I grow up I would like to be the kind of person that helps people, people in need.