Love Life Word Work

The next paragraph from Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy:

Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone’s hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.

Even more hope. I love this. It underscores the reconciliation that I already believe in but do not always feel the effects of.

I have been hungering mightily for a sense of significance. My faith says it is there but my day to day existence claims it is not. Whether we are overworked or underworked we are susceptible to the gremlin of meaninglessness. We reach out and try to connect. We look to our friends, pastors, family members, trying to see in their faces a positive reflection of ourselves that will show us we have meaning. Meaning, or significance, is even more important than health, comfort, financial security. I have found myself saying again and again, I can weather the hard times as long as I can see meaning in them. But I need to see meaning in my life as a whole. I need my life story to be meaningful. Maybe part of the trouble is I can’t see the big picture; all I can see, hear, smell, taste and feel are the particular things that are right in front of me at any one time.

And so I rise and fall with the wind and waves. If I’m in a depression I can’t see the horizon—I can’t even see any hope in the morning for the afternoon. Sometimes I even feel guilty longing for significance, like it were one of those idols I must lay on the altar of God. But Dr. Willard’s words refute that feeling of guilt for me. He reminds me that I was created for meaning, for signicance, in order to do good in my immediate vicinity as well as in the world at large. So I am supposed to look for significance. My friend Dave Durham said just last Sunday that seeking the kingdom of God is the same as looking for the kingdom. We look for the kingdom around us and we see it. In the same way we look for significance and see it in the love that flows from God—the love that makes good everything in creation.

Now the best part of this middle paragraph (the metaphorical cherry on this “word sundae”, if you will), is the personal ID in the last part. We each have a “specific context” in which God has made us, and we each have a particular flavor to our life that no one else has, or ever will have. For me this is like a hand on my shoulder blessing me, letting me know in no uncertain terms that life is worth living for me, even for the ne’er-do-well, ne’er-’er-gonna-do-well melancholic me.

So why did I even mention (in the previous entry) the film “The Girl in the Cafe”? Because it is a parable of meaning coming out of circumstances that had no apparent meaning and, for a person like me (or like you), that is well worth noting.

This morning after checking my email and my ebay I sat down in front of the television with coffee and got pulled in by a British movie about a socially backward government functionary and a quiet younger lady with whom he was attempting to socialize. After a couple of quiet dates with her he invites her to go to Reykyavik with him to a conference he had to attend. After all he had a second ticket he wasn’t using. It turned out to be a lot more than he bargained for. By being herself, a plain young woman with a particular story, the lady ended up changing her shy friend and history to boot. They have the movie rotating on HBO right now. The Girl in the Cafe with Richard Nighy and Kelly MacDonald. It was a quiet and sometimes awkward movie, no big moments, no chase scenes, but I liked it. It meant something beyond itself to me—that’s what we need from a film, isn’t it after all?

So after the credits started to roll I checked mail again and there was my good friend Rob F. answering my sad, sad message of 36 hours ago. He was wanting to find practical ways he can help me grasp the hope I need for the future. I am thankful for such a friend as he. I’ll call him and let him know I am coming to myself. And I am—after about six weeks of unemployment and depression. Six weeks of waking up every morning to thoughts of “where am I going to get money for the bills”. Six weeks of coffee, oatmeal, peanut butter and bologna (not together). Six weeks of fooling with web stuff (for donations). I sold a few books on ebay (more trouble than it’s worth), I called in all my IOU’s, which weren’t many. I fiddled with a couple old laptops that were donated to me, cleansing them of the too-sluggish Windows 98 and experimenting at installing linux distros. I learned a lot, and when I went to sell them I learned that people don’t really want to buy a laptop with a linux OS. Oh well … which brings me what I really want to say.
A couple nights ago, while I was watching and waiting the three and a half hours it would take to install the afore-mentioned linux operating system on an old off-brand (but aesthetically beautiful) laptop, I looked for a book to read in the gaps between the steps in the install process. The book I found was The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. I had read it (from the library) before, and afterwards found a used copy at a second-hand store. I let it set a while but finally picked it up again. When I began to read I had to think, ‘this is great stuff, did I really read this before? I don’t remember it being this good.’ Then I came to a passage that touched me so deeply I had to get a pencil and mark it. Then I read the next and had to bracket that, then the next. I ended up with three paragraphs, each bracketed separately. Here’s the first:

Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute self-consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is, indeed, a desperate response to frustration of the need we all have to count for something and be held to be irreplaceable, without price.

Now I must say I would not have marked this paragraph about “pathological self-obsession” except for the fact that it ended so well, even beautifully. For me the beauty hit me with the word “healed”—because healing is exactly what I (and many people I love) need.

Now, turning back to the first sentence, I didn’t think of myself as egotistical or self-obsessed, but when it comes to being healed by being adequately loved … well, I might come pretty close to pleading on that. Like Charles Colson, who pleaded guilty to the Watergate conspiracy—not because he did that particular crime, but because he had done other crimes of equal value and wanted to submit to justice, I feel a pull to submit to justice. Not out of a desire to be punished but out of a desire to be healed. What am I guilty of?

I am addicted to loving the inside of the walls of my own soul more than the living creatures who surround me every single day. I hug those walls and the images that I have projected on them—fantastic and phantasmal images with no real substance—fancy words for my persistent semi-belief that “nobody loves me, everybody hates me.” And if that’s not self-obsession I don’t know what is.

Then to close the paragraph, Dr. Willard goes on about our need, the unfulfillment of which sorrows us all, to be meaningfully, even infinitely, valued. Go back and read the blockquote above. It is almost poetic. I can’t explain it or expound upon it satisfactorily; I am writing about it just to show that it has touched me for the good.

By the way, about that cute little laptop, FedoraCore was too ponderous for the thing. I ended up formatting and installing another free linux distro, this time achieving operational equilibrium with the fast and light VectorLinux.

My next post will be about Dallas Willard’s next paragraph which I bracketed in pencil.

I wanted to make a sister site to my Spririt of Prayer web site so I tried to buy the name spiritoflove. Well it was not available in the dot com, dot net, and dot everythingelse except dot ws. WS is supposed to signify “web site”. So I bought that. I put the site up on that name and developed it somewhat. I did some graphics and put some essays I wrote along with some public domain texts that I like about, what else, the Spirit of Love. Eventually I decided that was one of the names I would give up (partially an economy decision). Besides I never did warm up to the ws family of domains. I felt it was a second-class citizen sort of domain. Plus, well … just try to pronounce it.

I moved the material from the site into Spirit of Prayer and let the name expire. I had owned it for two or three years, I think. I changed the link on my web sites … well, all but one page that I forgot. And there’s the didactic lesson for you. Learn from my mistake. I left it on my “Donation Page.” That’s the page where I put the best face on my web volunteer work, the free work I do for good causes here and abroad. Then recently, I did something I do once in a blue moon. I sent an email asking some friends if they wanted to help by donating to this poor web guy. I gave them the link in my email. Then, as an afterthought, I checked the links on the donation page. The links to the sites I keep up for the Kingdom of God and the good of humankind, and I found that my old name, unused by me but still on the page, currently transports me smack dab into the middle of the world of cyber-nudism galore, pictures and all. Someone had snatched up my used domain and is using it in the cause of something completely different than I did. Touting the benefits of various nudist resorts. Don’t go there.

Well, doncha know I pulled up my ftp client and whipped that little bugger out of there lickety-split. So, be careful where you leave your used domains laying around. Preferably pick names you want to keep a while, then keep them.

It’s a bully pulpit, the web, isn’t it?

I am a PowerPoint volunteer at my church. It is a kind of invisible job, but it is far-reachng in scope. I do it about once a month, sitting behind a narrow desk on the front edge of the balcony. I sit below and in front of the sound desk so the people behind me cannot see me and the people downstairs cannot see me either, that is, unless they are sitting in the front row and take the trouble to turn and crane their necks, but they hardly ever do, so I am sort of personally invisible.

But the results of my work are very much visible. The people are dependent on the PowerPoint slides to be able to sing the words of the songs. If I make a mistake and punch the wrong slide everyone sees it and I feel horrible. I promise you, I am nervous every time my turn comes up.

Now, all that being said … this morning was Easter morning and I got to do PP for both early and late service. Easter at Belmont is always good. For one thing it is resurrection day. For another thing the whole church is a pool of love, for me it is anyway. And for another thing we have choir, drum line and bagpipes. Choir at Belmont is not an every Sunday thing so it is always nice when we do have it. As for the drum line, you are saying, ‘you’re kidding, a drum line in church?‘ Yes, a drum line in church. They have been doing this for quite a few years. The first time I experienced the Belmont Easter drums I wept all the way through it—the kind of weeping that hurts behind the eyes and down the jaw line. I guess the pain comes of holding it back. Somehow we have to hold it back in public, don’t we? Then I wept all the way home plus every time I thought of it, no matter where I was, for about three weeks. Would you believe a bunch of guys skillfully beating on field snares and bass drums can remind one that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. Well, it can and very effectively.

Now for the bagpipes. There’s a man in our town named Jay Dawson who has given himself to the pipes. I say given himself because I know he would have had to so to master such an esoteric musical instrument. Jay used to do such things as conducting symphony orchestras and such. I don’t know how much he does that anymore but I do know I am really glad he took up the pipes. He plays to the glory of God. And God is glorified by his playing.

And so this morning after the pastor pronounced benediction, in Hebrew no less, our director, McLauren Foster, raised her hand towards the back of the auditorium and signalled our piper. If you have never heard “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” on the bagpipes, well you simply must resolve to hear it next year. So come. You will laugh, you will cry, you will want to fight somebody.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.

I have had a bookmark on a particular page in Kierkegaard for a couple weeks because I didn’t want to lose that page until I had made a note on it. Today I am making that note, then reading on. I’m not sure I’ve got everything out of it yet, probably not, but at least I am writing this post about it and so there will be a record of the quote and my thoughts and response to it.

The page in question is in Søren Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript as translated by Donald F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, very bottom line of page 61 and top of 62. Here’s what I read there:

As for God, he is never a third party when he is present in the religious consciousness; this is precisely the secret of the religious consciousness.

First of all, I’m going to encourage you not to be put off by the phrase “religious consciousness”. Religious consciousness is not a special kind of consciousness or even a special interest; it is normal human consciousness. Everyone’s consciousness is religious because everyone wants to love and be loved and God is the source of love.

My interest is piqued and excited by this passage because it reminds me of God’s closeness. “He is closer to me than I am to myself.” (An essay here) He is not third party in my consciousness, which is my relationship with myself. And He is not third party in community, which is my relationship with other people.

Years ago there was a popular tune, “From a Distance,” by Bette Midler. It’s a beautiful anthem and I could enjoy the truth it points up … until the point in the song where it said, “God is watching us from a distance.” That made no sense to me whatsever. A god who watches from a distance is a third-party god, an arms-length god, a distant god.

God is with us. Jesus Christ, His Son, showed us He is close, not far. Ramifications? There are lots of them, and one of them is that we need never be alone—because we are never alone. But how to be sure? and how to live it out? The same way we have always known. We relate to God by faith. And we relate to others and ourselves by faith.

God is with us—why do we act as if He were not? Because we would rather not believe it. Why?