Emily Dickinson's "Life -- is what we make of it --"

Life — is what we make of it –
Death — we do not know –
Christ’s acquaintance with Him
Justify Him — though –
He — would trust no stranger –
Other — could betray –
Just His own endorsement –
That — sufficeth Me –
All the other Distance
He hath traversed first –
No New Mile remaineth –
Far as Paradise –
His sure foot preceding –
Tender Pioneer –
Base must be the Coward
Dare not venture — now –

Icons of the Real, pt. 2

I'm still mulling over the Mother Theresa prayer:

"Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you, and say: 'Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.'"

Seeing Jesus in the faces of others is not, perhaps, a panacea to making you more loving toward them. At least, not yet.

I've been trying, these last few weeks, to see Jesus in the faces of people who try my patience. But, I've discovered a PROBLEM: people sin. Jesus didn't. How does one see Jesus in the face of a child throwing a tantrum, for example? Or in the face of some creep who drives slowly beside you, offering you a ride as you walk home?

I've been trying this out at work. I think the principle is that a Jesus-follower strives to treat Jesus with all the glory, love, and attention He deserves. Therefore, if I see Jesus in the faces of roommates, family members, or the displaced, I will treat them with loving esteem and attentiveness. But, it's sort of easy to esteem Jesus. He doesn't annoy me, he doesn't smell bad, he doesn't talk back, he cleans up after himself. How can I honor Jesus through a person who sins, or who sins toward me?

I don't know.

But, goodness, think of how holy I'd be if I could do that! I'd be like God. Isn't that just what God does? He looks at my ugly sinfulness and sees Jesus. On that basis, we're friends. How does God do it? It seems impossible.

". . .All the other Distance/He hath traversed first—/No New Mile remaineth—/Far as Paradise—. . ."

Did Jesus look at "tax collectors and sinners" and see his own face?

My Tender Pioneer: On Work and Leisure

Life—is what we make of it—
Death—we do not know—
Christ's acquaintance with Him
Justify Him—though—

He—would trust no stranger—
Other—could betray—
Just His own endorsement—
That—sufficeth Me—

All the other Distance
He hath traversed first—
No New Mile remaineth—
Far as Paradise—

His sure foot preceding—
Tender Pioneer—
Base must be the Coward
Dare not venture—now— 

Emily Dickinson

What is life, but to be near you?

 Do you think Jesus ever sought entertainment for himself when he was bored? Was he ever bored?

 I am a base coward.

Thoughts. I'm sure I have them. This week I've been wallowing in worldliness. Instead of attending to pain and emptiness, letting those things bring me to a better place, closer to the heart of God, I watched a couple seasons of The Office. Yes, that's what I did. During college, when every Christian I knew was watching the Office, I saw only two episodes of that show. Once, the British version during my study abroad in Oxford, and the second time, the American version, the following summer. When things are cool I do not care for them. That being said, why is it that the sight of the first 4 seasons of the Office sitting on my roommate's bookcase became the opiate for the masses of my weariness? When I don't even like television? In college, there were some memorable discussions about the nature of rest, work, and leisure. It makes sense now, these talks we had. I'm harkening back to one class session on the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass and one class lecture on Josef Pieper's Leisure, The Basis Of Culture, specifically. I have not yet read Pieper's work, though I ought to.

The general idea is this. Work and leisure are both times of productive, abundant activity. Leisure is a time for creativity and culture. According to both Douglass and Pieper, at no time should one's soul be deadened or one's intellect dulled. Life--rushing, brilliant life--should happen all the time. Leisure is not idleness: no more is it debauchery, no more is it dissipation. Leisure is contemplative, creative work.

Douglass' narrative describes the slaves' holidays: the slave masters offered up their slaves to drunken tomfoolery, knowing that just as backbreaking labor could not be sustained indefinitely, neither could Bacchic celebration. These kinds of tactics made the slaves happy to go back to their slavery, deceived into believing that leisure, or freedom, was not a good to be desired.

We talked in class about how Western culture follows this exact principle. Work too hard in your 9-5, give up all of yourself--too much of yourself--to your career, but then, the weekend comes. On the weekend, or even the day's end, pushed past healthy limits of productiveness, you seek drunkenness, sex, noise: any manner of over-the-top "leisure" to bring you back to balance. "Leisure" exists to make you forget that the rest of the week you have lived as a slave.

This, sometimes, is how I live. I don't really drink and I don't sleep around--I truly hate noise--but this is America: there are lots of opportunities for dissipation. This week, I chose to bludgeon my senses with the Office and too much Panang curry, instead of drowning my heart and soaking my spirit in a couple yellow mango margaritas and a one-night stand.

I need to live differently. Please understand, I love my job. I love my job as much as I could love a "for the time being until I figure out where I'm going to go to grad school and how to make a living not being a computer programmer/engineer/doctor/lawyer/physicist". It could just be that I'm too tired for the work that I do, that I'm not really up to it, or that this week was especially difficult. Or, it could be that I approach my job with the wrong attitude, that while I enjoy it, what I'm really waiting for is the weekend, or the end of the day, so I can "really" live. The problem with this is that when I get home I'm too spent (this is exactly the right word) to live according to my creative, child-of-God nature. I ought to be writing. I ought to be preparing papers to present at conferences, I ought to have friends over to cook or bake, and I ought to be baking and cooking whether or not anyone else is here. I ought to be reading poetry, trudging through French short stories, and cultivating my awareness of God's presence and favor. I ought to be building community with my roommate. I ought to be working on low-stress craft projects.

But this isn't what happens, or it is not what happened this week, when I come home.

When I come home I need to throw off the world, peel it off like a soiled skin, throw it outside to be burned, locking the door tight. I need to let my soul expand, and then feed it nourishing food. Steve Carrell cannot do this for me. Only Jesus can. There is something about satire, about watching other people live and work and worry, that is comforting (in a bad way) to my soul on a weekday evening. But what if I had instead written more on this blog? What would I have discovered? What if, in a week spent reading Lauren Winner's latest book about embracing life in the middle, I had actually been brave enough to live in the middle of my own twenty-something angst?

Sometimes I worry about the things I miss.

 I did read my Bible everyday. That's something. And I liked it. That's something else.

I want to be like St. Therese of Lisieux. I want to like only what God likes.

I need to do work-work and leisure-work more joyfully.

For next time. . .on bearing fruit and needing to be buried in the earth before you do.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things (turn my heart from wanting to watch the Office) and give me life in your ways.