The Myth of Certainty

Tonight, I find myself quite restless and unable to sleep. I spent a good deal of time tonight reading and pondering Dan Taylor's The Myth of Certainty. Phenomenal book, I highly recommend it. It has caused many other questions to arise within me. I know that I am, by nature, a skeptic and a questioner, but to what degree do I allow myself to be as such? I have endless questions within me, but how much do I actually dare to voice them to the world around me? Even if I dare to voice them aloud to the infinite starry sky, that in itself is frightening, because to even speak something aloud, even to no one at all, makes the doubt REAL. Also, how much am I willing to voice my questions, doubts and opinions to others? I have to admit, I have lived in Christian communities long enough to know that questions about God and Christian faith do not just rattle belief structures, they seem to threaten reality and identity as we know it. When I question the existence of God, or the theology of Calvinism, or the doctrine of complementarianism, or lo que sea, I find that I am often met with either misunderstanding or blatant refusal of my question. Perhaps, for many people, such belief structures become almost definitive of their being, who they are, what they stand for, and what they reject (i.e.: troublesome cynics like me.)
I am not on a mission to attack those who are "certain" in their beliefs. I am only hoping to ask: for those who hold certain beliefs (myself included), WHY do you hold those beliefs? Not because others (family, church, institutions) have instructed you to believe in such a manner; but rahter, what is it that drives you, impels you, causes you to seek out something to believe in? When we have ceased to search, we have diminished the possiblities of God.
Who are we, but simple, seeking sojourners? "To have arrived" is an illusion in itself; I do not believe that this life is about arrival, per se. It's about a journey. . . . .
I very much resonate with Pascal, because at the moment, "I have seen to much to deny, too little to be sure. . . ."

Hotel Rwanda

Today, I went with my Getsch RA staff to see the new movie, Hotel Rwanda. I must say, it is a very painful movie to watch. It is the story of one hotel that became a shelter for refugees during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It made me hurt to see the violence, the fear on the faces of children, and the scenes of corpses littering the roadsides. I didn't even know those people, but it still makes me feel so broken to witness a portrayal of the suffering that they endured at the hands of their fellow countrymen. What injustices have been done in the history of humankind! Also in the movie, I was so broken by the negligence of the American and European people, even though they could see the suffering on their televisions, it was just easier for them to ignore it and "go right back to eating their dinner," as one American character remarked. How much do we as Americans ignore the suffering and injustice in this world, simply because it doesn't affect us? Let me be a little bit blunt, and say, maybe the reason our armed forces are over in Iraq right now, "establishing freedom," or whatever they call it; is simply for our own national interest, and not for anything else. What about the other countries that don't have oil for our economy? Why did we not intervene in Rwanda in 1994, why are we not intervening right now in the genocide in Sudan? We can't push our own agenda on the rest of the world, but yet we can just sit idly by as our fellow humans suffer and die needlessly? Why are we not broken over the tragedy of the tsunami, or the Holocaust, or the civil wars and ethnic oppression in Latin America? Simply because it doesn't reach into our nice, suburban lives or into our nice, suburban television? Can we just close our eyes to the pain that is going on all around us? When I drive into Minneapolis, you can see everywhere on the streets the effects of a society of inequality and discrimination. Why do my Latino friends live in apartments where there are bullet holes in the walls and the halls are dark and smell like urine, while there are million-dollar townhomes being built not even a hundred yards away? Why should they not receive an equal opportunity as everyone else? Simply because of their ethnicity?
Do you ever look around at this world, and wonder, how far have we fallen from grace? This is not what God intended for us to be! Is peace ever possible, is real community ever possible, is selfless love ever possible, is true beauty ever seen, is true expression even appreciated, do we even know how to search for the divine? We live these "Christian" lives, making sure to get all of our doctrine straight, say the right prayers, and get enough Scripture memorized to make us mature. But maybe we're still missing the point. Don't you think that God wanted us to witness the power of his love in the stare of a grateful homeless man, rather than attending a well-organized worship service? Maybe God wanted us to hear his heart through poetry, music, art and literature, rather than perfectly delineate his Word to the point that it no longer holds any meaning? Do you think that God just put us on this earth to merely survive; to get through each day sufficiently? As my favorite song, The Pretender, by Jackson Browne says: "I go to work each day, and when the evening rolls around, I go on home, and lay my body down, and when the morning light comes streaming in, I'll get up and do it again." Were we only made to become creatures of habit, ruled by our routine and business, but rather having something, someone that made it worthwhile to get up in the morning? Do you dare to love deeply, hope for more than just everyday routine, and actually be more than just what society says you should be? What is this all for, what is the point?

Romanticism vs. Realism?

I just had an interesting talk with a fellow philosophy friend about the battle between romanticism and realism. For those of you who are unfamiliar with those two terms, I shall explain. Realism is the belief that life must be accepted as the reality we see, we must live according to the good and the bad of life, the world can be understood and rationalized by scientific means. Romanticism is a worldview of living with dreams, hope and passion, throwing caution to the wind and being spontaneous, not being ruled or subdued by the bad things in life, and also not accepting the status quo of reality. I guess you could already tell by the way I described those two extremes, that I am quite a romanticist. I can't just blindly accept the reality of life or the scientific, rational explanations for the way things are. I have to let myself question and search and hope for more, or else I would simply die inside. So, I guess my constant thought is, which of these should we allow to rule our minds? Should we be dreamers, poets and vagabonds our whole lives; or should we seek to make a living, survive in the world, and contribute to the common good of society? Should we be ruled by our emotion or our intellect? Our reason or our faith? Our dreams or reality? The common credo of society or a transcendent hope in something more? I guess I could think like Pascal: "It is not through the arrogant exertion of our reason, but through the humble submission of our reason that we truly come to know ourselves." But then again, he also said: "We are never living, but hoping to live." Did he mean that we are stuck in our realism mindset of simply accepting reality, or does he mean that we are constantly pervaded with a longing for some higher reality? This seems like an eternal question that has been asked countless times throughout history, so I know that I am no closer to an answer than anyone before me. But I just have to simply ask the question of it, the tension of my thoughts and feelings, for as Thomas Merton said: "Questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked."

The Problem of Pain

C.S. Lewis once wrote a book called The Problem of Pain, if I remember correctly, and I know that Lewis was a man whose life was akin to the turmoil and grief that pervades the human experience. I know that all of us will inevitably experience pain, sorrow and brokenness, and to what end does it affect us? We can choose to ignore it (which I have become very adept in doing) and muffle it within our souls. . . .to which end it tends to eventually explode after enough time of ignoring it. We can become numb to it, and not let ourselves feel the pain of the human life or feel the joy of community or real love. Or, I guess we can also become obsessed with it, and it can consume us to the point where we can hardly function. So, where does that leave us? I don't think that we in America are very exposed to oppression, poverty and suffering. We are quite desensitized to what it means to feel. . . . .and if a person is quite given over to feeling and expression, he or she is often taken for a fool. How often do I actually allow myself to fully grieve, or even weep, over the death of a loved one? Why can't I allow myself to admit that I am broken and pained by loss and injustice?
When I was in Guatemala, I worked in a small mountain town called Santa Maria de Jesus, which was populated by an indigenous Mayan people. They lived in dire poverty, with conditions that one can only imagine. I worked in a school for handicapped children for two months while I was there, and each day as I came back again and again, I found my heart getting harder and colder to the poverty and pain that I saw around me. I felt helpless and foreign and confused- how could I help these people, what would be the point of helping them, and why are they so forgotten? We lived in homes in Antigua, a colonial town in the valley below Santa Maria, and most of the people that lived in wealth and comfort in that city had never even set foot in Santa Maria, which was only a few miles up the mountain. I could not let myself feel or love or actually try to understand this poverty that was all around me, because it was worse than anything that I had ever seen before. My heart began to break for my handicapped children throughout my time there. There was one girl in particular, Petronila, who was a radiantly beautiful 13-year-old that was confined to a wheelchair because she had been afflicted with spina bifida since birth. She had no use of her legs- they simply hung below her chair as she wheeled around. She was rather timid, but she would come up to me every day at recess and simply hold my hand, not wanting to play rough like the other children, but just wanting to be near someone. That was what drew me more and more to Petronila, and also made me want to stay away. I did not want to grow to love this girl, because it hurt too much to hear about her painful childhood from the other teachers, or about her scorn from her townspeople (who did not accept crippled people, they were believed to have a spiritual curse), or just to see the physical pain that she experienced every single day. One day, when all of the young children were running up onto the flat roof to play in the sunshine for recess, I was carrying up the little ones, one at a time, and playing with them up on the roof. When I came down to retrieve another first grader, Petronila inadvertently grabbed my hand and said to me with eyes hungry for love: "Seno Melodia, puedes llevarme arriba?" "Miss Melody, can you bring me upstairs?" My heart just broke for her, as I gathered her frail body into my arms and noticed the sores that were on her back from sitting all day, and we walked up into the sunshine. I will never in my life forget her face as she came out onto the roof of the school for the first time, and she could look with me down over the town and into the valley, and she reveled in the sunshine, saying over and over again: "How beautiful, how beautiful. . . ." in her quiet, timid voice. I will never forget that day, and the joy that this girl experienced. . . . . .she was truly "one of the least of these."
I cannot explain away the pain of Petronila. I cannot just say that one day God will magically take away her infirmity and her painful history and her cultural identity of outcast. But I do know that my heart does break over her, and I know that God's heart breaks over her even more. There is something so profound that I saw in this little Mayan girl, something that I don't even know if I will ever be able to put into words for as long as I live. I cannot explain away her pain. . . . . .but she gave me a different picture of what it means to truly love.

Confessions of a Perpetual Skeptic

Tonight, I read The Hungering Dark by Frederick Buechner. . . .that is a pensive and transforming book if I've ever seen one. I only wish that I had not read it in such a exhausted state, I might have understood it more. But also tonight, I finished an article for Hidden Manna, Bethel's "spiritual" magazine of sorts. I thought that I should post it on here, because it is very much an expression of my thoughts as any of my other posts on here have been. So here's that fateful article of mine:

Confessions of a Perpetual Skeptic
In search of something more. . . . .

Jose Ortega, the Spanish philosopher, once said: “To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand."
In the Christian faith, at times there can be a tendency to expect answers, explanations and properly delineated theology. I am here to admit that I have none of the above. I am a skeptic at heart. My search for God is often more defined by my doubts than my answers. Call me a cynic, but I’d say I’m a seeker.
Up until high school, I lived my entire life in a conservative evangelical environment, which I must admit, was a fairly good upbringing. I knew a great deal about the Bible, the Christian faith, and I could explain the “plan of salvation” in fifteen seconds flat. However, I must admit that although I had been raised in the Christian faith, by the time I was a senior in high school, I found myself with an inexplicable restlessness that pervaded my soul despite my staunch conviction that I “had all the answers.” During my senior year of high school, I distinctly remember a day when I left school, went out to my car in the parking lot, and sat in the driver’s seat and cried. As I sat there weeping, I had a shocking thought: “I have had this ‘faith’ all of my life, but I know that there’s something so much more.” What could this something more possibly be?
Upon my arrival to Bethel as a freshman, I assumed that this community of faith would somehow solve all of my doubts and questions. However, throughout my freshman and sophomore year, I found the uncertainties in my heart to be growing more and more. I could not deny the skepticism that always was in my mind. I began to wonder, why do I even believe in this Christian faith? The answer was simple: because I always had believed it.
In my sophomore spring semester I traveled abroad to Guatemala and spent the summer doing mission work directly after my semester abroad. During my time in those foreign cultures, my worldview was challenged and transformed. I was confronted with poverty, oppression, and injustice and became broken over the state of this world. I began to wonder about what kind of “God” was at work in this world where there was so much pain and brokenness.
When I returned to Bethel this fall, as a junior and a freshman RA, I was still plagued by this strange, persistent longing for something more. I threw myself into a journey of searching, questioning, seeking- I read philosophers, theologians, poets and fellow sojourners (I highly recommend reading Brian McLaren, Thomas Merton, Brennan Manning). I began to see how my “perfectly constructed faith” had been crumbling over the past few years, and it was about to completely shatter. One morning in December, something hit me, and I realized that I could no longer pretend. . . .and I suddenly rejected it all. I no longer could just go to church, read my Bible, pray “good” prayers, go to Vespers, attend chapel or do all the “good Christian things” simply because I always had done them. I knew that the life of good Christian performance was not what my heart was longing for at all; I wanted something truly real. . . .
So, what is this “something more” that I was restless for? I am in a constant battle of almost giving up and yet wanting so much more. I remember one time, when I was on the beach in Guatemala, staring out into the wide expanse of ocean, and pouring out my confusion and frustration to God. In the midst of my intense monologue to God, I heard Him say to me: “Mel, I want you to dance with me.” At first, I couldn’t, but after a few moments, I began to run and dance and jump among the powerful waves of the Pacific Ocean- I danced with God. It was a moment that was saturated with wonder and passion and the powerful presence of God. That was my real, intimate moment with the God that I was longing for- more authentic than any moment I have ever had in church! That is what I was made for, to experience God in a way that reason cannot explain.
Seeking God is a continuous battle between our doubt and faith, our passion and apathy, our confusion and clarity. It is okay to doubt and question: because through that you can find out what’s real. I don’t want a God of church services and proper theology; I desire an intimate, powerful, all-encompassing, passionate, authentic dance with this unbelievable God! That truly is the “something more” that I have always been longing for, and I won’t settle for anything less! My question is: what is it that you truly desire?

Maybe I just can't. . . . .

Many thoughts on my mind today, as I'm supposed to be writing an article for my school's "spiritual" newsletter about my own faith journey. But if anything, I'm more confused in my own faith journey than ever. I just heard a speaker here on campus talk about "walking away from your sin, leaving it behind, becoming everything that God created you to be." I sat during that talk feeling like I ought to be having more and more guilt, as if that would be a proper ambition to change me. But the thing is, all my life, guilt has been the primary motivation to change, to become more holy, to follow God and serve him more. To talk about sin and rebellion and similar such things, without a deeper philosophical search into the root of those things, that only is treating the symptoms rather than the disease.
Sure, I'm a stubborn, tough chick. Don't mess with me, of course. I know that God desires for me to be holy, bla bla bla, all those things. . . . . . .but what REALLY is God after? Is he only wanting for me to have right behavior, to stop doing things that are rebellious and selfish, or is he after something so much deeper? I can't just berate myself until I change, so that God will be more pleased with me. I have to start with the mindset that God is already pleased with me, but yet there is the problem that I run from him often, willingly or unwillingly. I don't believe that this life is about attaining a perfect balance of behavior, thoughts, actions, etc. I think it's about something so much more. A journey, of discovering who I am (not who others think I am), who God is (not who others tell me He is like, but who he TRULY is), and not being afraid to ask questions. Who was it, Plato, that said: "Know thyself." And something that has been on my mind lately is what Pascal wrote about so much: "A man must know his wretchedness and also his glory in order to know the grace that God has bestowed upon him." If we as humans are too caught up in our glory, then we become arrogant; if we are too obsessed with our fallenness and wretchedness, then we become self-deprecating and depressed. We must know that each human is in essence a blatant paradox.
I am often too insecure to truly love or be loved, but yet I "long for love with every fiber of my being"; I too afraid of criticism to write, but yet something within my cries out for expression and truth and authenticity; I am too busy to truly connect with others, but yet there is a loneliness that is inherently within me that drives me to seek community; I don't know how to seek God with all of my paradoxes of faith and reason, but yet I long for him with a desire that is above and beyond anything my emotion or my intellect could ever explain; I love to be with people, but yet I long to be alone and think and search; I want to have time alone, but yet, when I do, I grow endlessly restless; I want to find truth, but yet every time that I think I have found it, it seems to elude me again. I am an enigma, a paradox, a mystery to myself and my fellow humans.
I am a sojourner, unwilling to accept regular answers and explanations, always searching and questioning for something so much deeper. All I can say, in the midst of this really inarticulate piece of expression, is that I have not arrived. I will never actually "arrive" at perfect truth and perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom. I am always searching, always falling short, sometimes seeing God, sometimes wondering if he's even there. . . . .but if anything, I know that I can be honest with God and with myself. . . . . .can I be honest with you, whoever dares to read this?

Do I REALLY care?

Hello all. (If anybody actually reads this, I'll be surprised. But yeah, doesn't matter to me.) But anyways, today I have been thinking a lot about the recent tsunami disasters over in Asia- it's devastating. There have been so many people that have died, over 100,000! I don't know what to do, and I feel helpless, and rather saddened for this immense tragedy. If anything, I grieve for these people simply because they are people. They didn't deserve to die like this, there are so many of my fellow human beings that were violently killed in this disaster. If anything, I don't know what to do, except feel for these human lives. I guess we could talk about the magnitude of this tragedy, or the ensuing possible problems, but with all of the talk about it (or lack thereof here in America), how are we changed by it? How am I changed by it? How does it change the way I live my daily life, to know that people on the other side of the world are living in disease, hunger, disaster, and in the midst of thousands upon thousands of the dead and the dying. If anything, I feel like I ought to feel a connection with humanity, because that is what has taken a blow. I can't believe that we are NOT affected by this, because we are all a part of the human race, of people that have thoughts and emotions and ideals and dreams, and shouldn't we grieve and feel and hope to understand our fellow man in crisis? I don't know. . . .I'm probably saying a whole lot of nothing. . . .but yet, I feel like I just need to say anything, because we cannot just keep quiet. Who will be the voice of those 100,000+ people? Who will weep for them and mourn for them and carry on their legacy and their memory? They had significance. . . .maybe not to us. . . . .but maybe they SHOULD have more significance to us. Am I too focused on my own agenda to not care about other human lives that are in pain? Where do we go from here?

Don't movies make you think. . . . .?

Tonight I spent most of the evening watching the movie The Patriot by myself, crying through much of it. Movies are so intense sometimes, and they make me think like nothing else does. It's such an interesting concept: to stop your life for an hour or more, and for that time, and be brought into the life of another person. You get to feel their feelings, experience their losses and gains, and be caught up in the drama and joy of someone else's life for a while. You get to experience an adventure, or a story, and let yourself be brought into it. If we don't let movies affect us, then what does that say about us as human beings? Maybe some would say that we are not brought sway by the clever tricks of Hollywood moviemakers, but I would say that if any movie doesn't make you think in some way or another, then maybe you have lost touch with what it means to be human: to feel, to rejoice, to feel sorrow.
For example, when I first saw Braveheart (amazing movie, by the way), I could not move from my chair for several minutes afterward, and then I was struck for quite a while, just thinking about what it means to fight for a cause. I love war movies like the Patriot or Braveheart or the Last Samurai. . . .I think that they say something so profound about the human spirit, and its unwillingness to be oppressed or crushed. Maybe those movies express something in us, that we haven't been willing to admit to ourselves: that we long to be a part of something greater. Maybe we wish we could fight like William Wallace, and actually do something about the injustice in this world. If only. . . . .
Another movie that really got me thinking was The Truman Show. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's a powerful movie. . . .about a guy name Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey, who is phenomenal) who lives in a world that is constructed all around him, this huge "bubble" that all of the people and everything are made to contrive a false reality that he lives in, and then they observe him in this false reality for the sake of a worldwide television program. That movie is the kind that makes you think about how things really are. Do we ever really question the reality in which we live? Do we ever wonder if there's more? Truman, throughout the movie, wants to be an explorer, but the "world" he lives in keeps holding him back in any way possible, but he just can't give up his dream that there's something so much bigger out there that he wants to discover. Do we let the "world" that we live in contain us and define us? Or do we ever even try to search for something more?
Other good thinking movies that I highly recommend are: Dead Poets' Society, Good Will Hunting, Forrest Gump, Life is Beautiful, and the Shawshank Redemption. They are all great examples of how movies still can be great art, in my opinion. And they each tell an amazing story of human life.
Recently, one movie that really drove me to thinking was the modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet, with Claire Danes and Leonardo Dicaprio. At the end of a tragedy like that, it can drive you to do two things: become very angry at the way that their attempt of love ended, or it could make you think about the human condition in which we live. Why is it that tragedy speaks volumes louder to us than "happy endings"? What is it that's so powerful in the loss of life, where "from the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life," did this hatred breed love, but did the hatred triumph? Or what actually triumphed? The story of love that caused the hatred to cease? And also, how many of us actually dare to love as powerfully as that? I have had a few select friends in my life, that I loved them so much, I didn't know what to do with myself. Do we ever dare to love that deeply, that passionately, even in friendships or family relationships? Or are we nicely cautious when it comes to love, because we aren't willing to risk? A wise mentor of mine once said: "If you never dare to love deeply, you will never feel deep pain, but you will also never feel deep joy." Think about it.
Whoever dares to read this, thank you for letting me think out loud. . . . . . . .

Spanish poetry on my mind. . . . .

Here's a poem that's on my mind tonight:
Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan azules los astros a lo lejos".
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Como no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oír la noche inmensa, mas inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oido.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.

Isn't that beautiful? I had to memorize that for a Spanish conversation course once, and I love it, it's such a sad, bittersweet. . . .kind of wistful poem. Call me a hopeless romantic. For those of you out there who aren't hispanohablantes, here's the poem in ingles:

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
Someone else's. She will be someone else's.
As she oncebelonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.
Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Gotta love Pablo Neruda, the old romantic. I wish I could write like that. . . . .sigh. . . . .alas . . . . .