Like the Moon We Borrow Our Light: On Vows

"Lots of churches take the celebration of Jesus' baptism as an occasion for congregants to renew their own baptismal vows. I find this hard. I remember what I pledged at my baptism and how badly I've done at keeping those pledges and I wonder if I dare make them again." 

--Lauren Winner, Girl Meets God

 Lauren Winner, who is one of my favorite living authors, seems to think that every believer is bound by vows made to God during their conversion and baptism. I never think of my relationship with God in this way, and I'm beginning to think that it would be helpful if I did. I often think it would be good for me to either marry or join a monastic order because I love the idea of being bound by a lifelong vow. I think making eternal commitments is easier somehow, because one must simply form one's life around that promise, instead of living committed to something for a time and then beginning over again. 

But when I gave God my heart, I made a vow that was not only lifelong, but everlasting. When I accepted his promises to me, I made promises to him: promises to love, trust, and obey him, no matter what happens. It's shocking to think of my relationship with God this way, because it means that I have broken my vows so many times. It reminds me of Dante's Paradise, and the way he organizes heaven, with the moon as the lowest realm, assigned to nuns who broke their vows. They are shades, scarcely visible because of the unsubstantial nature of their own wills. Hahaha. The irony of this is overwhelming.

One of the best poems I read in college was Donne's "A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's Last Going into Germany." I repeat it to myself sometimes because it reminds me of the total allegiance I have made to God, and of my own need to ensure that my love is well-ordered, with God as the center of my affections. Here are the last two stanzas of the poem:

Seal then this bill of my divorce to all,
On whom those fainter beams of love did fall ;
Marry those loves, which in youth scatter'd be
On fame, wit, hopes—false mistresses—to Thee.
Churches are best for prayer, that have least light ;
To see God only, I go out of sight ;
    And to escape stormy days, I choose
        An everlasting night.

I sacrifice this island unto Thee,
And all whom I love there, and who loved me ;
When I have put our seas 'twixt them and me,
Put thou Thy seas betwixt my sins and Thee.
As the tree's sap doth seek the root below
In winter, in my winter now I go,
    Where none but Thee, the eternal root
        Of true love, I may know.

Right now I'm struggling with obedience. It's amazing how convoluted my desires can be. Some days, I genuinely want to obey God. And other days, I only want to want to be obedient. I spend a lot of time asking myself if obedience is actually worthwhile. This is hard. Today I'm feeling like it would just be easier if I had no will of my own, because then I wouldn't have to be so concerned with the state of my affections all the time. I'm deeply concerned with the order of my loves right now: do I really love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength? Sometimes, I feel like I can't obey God because I don't really trust him all that much, but, if my vows mean anything, then I have promised to obey him even when I don't understand what he's asking or why.

Abraham obeyed right up to the point of killing Isaac, only stopping because God intervened. Does my heart align to the will of God so completely? I will tell you right now: it does not. But how do I come to this place of perfect surrender? How do I stop questioning whether what God wants me to do, or not do, is really the right thing or the best thing or the thing that I am actually going to do? How do I just pursue obedience regardless of the circumstances? Micah 6: 8 fell on my head the other day like an anvil . .it makes me feel, O, so convicted about the way I've been thinking about life.

"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

I think a lot of obedience comes down to trusting God, to walking with him in humility. If I trust that God is entirely holy, then I trust that doing what he opposes is inherently disgusting and dangerous. If I trust that God loves me utterly, then I can trust that what he asks is for my own good. If I trust that God punishes sin, then I can trust that God will hold me accountable for the sins that I commit. 

"Trust and obey/there is no better way/to be happy in Jesus/than to trust and obey."

That refrain is stuck in my head right now, it's so blessedly simple to sing and ponder, but so hard to practice. This post is full of music. Here is another song I'm wrestling with right now.

"Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior"

Do you ever find it hard to trust, dear Reader? I can't sing those words glibly. I can't sing them without picturing myself in the ocean frantically trying to swim with the depths of the sea falling far below my scrambling toes. Obedience is scary, I tell you. But the reason we obey is because submission to the will of God is our greatest good. Apart from grace, all is lost. Charles Spurgeon says: 

"Like the moon, we borrow our light; bright as we are when grace shines on us, we are darkness itself when the Sun of Righteousness withdraws himself. Therefore let us cry to God never to leave us."

The problem with those moony nuns in La Divina Comedia is that they believed something else could be better than obeying God. All thoughts on monastic vows aside, I understand their complaint. But I don't want to be a nun on the moon, I want to trust that God is who he says he is, that my life contains meaning and substance only when I cling to him, and that there is nothing offered by the world that can compete with the great good I find in Jesus. So I guess I had better endeavor to keep my promises. 

Winner, speaking to her priest, before being baptized: "This is ridiculous, I can't promise these things. Half the time I don't trust God one iota. I can't stand up there and promise that I will trust Him forever and ever. Who on earth makes these promises?"

The priest replied: "You don't just answer all these questions in the affirmative. You say, 'I will, with God's help'." 

Not my will, O Lord, but yours be done.  

Keeping the Sabbath: The Infant Christ, Lemon Meringue Pie, and One Honorable Bird

I love Christian art. I love it the way I love monasticism, liturgy, and trees. Christian art helps me sense the reality of the depth of the faith I profess. It connects me to the Church throughout time and space. I love that I can say the words "Christian Art" and conjure up images rendered long before the advent of Thomas Kincaid. I love that people have long been using art to wrestle with and build their faith. I love that art can be prayer, worship, scholarship, and contemplation. I love that beauty and creative expression are long established components of Christian worship.

Today I stayed home from church for a solitary sabbath: I slept in, had pan au chocolat, tea, and strawberries for breakfast. I compared 4 different versions of Psalm 91: in the ESV, the Message,  the Book of Common Prayer, and the Louis Segond French translation. I re-read bits of Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God, read now in the solemn mindfulness of her latest work, Still. I tried to pray Psalm 91 for a few people I've been feeling worried about, and for myself. I asked for an increase of faith.

 "His huge outstretched arms protect you—
      under them you're perfectly safe;
      his arms fend off all harm."

"Il te couvrira de ses plumes, Et tu trouveras un refuge sous ses ailes."

"He shall defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers." 

 "He will cover you with his pinions,
    and under his wings you will find refuge."

My faith is not what it ought to be. I often find it hard to pray. I often don't want to pray, and when I do pray, I find it overwhelming; I want to stop, because there are so many things to pray for.
I went to the Norton Simon, because it's only a 30 minute walk away (I took the bus) and because I imagine myself as a person who goes to art museums all the time. It involved strolling through the water lotus gardens, watching grey-green tadpoles flit and gold-orange dragonflies gleam. It involved the kid's meal: grilled cheese and a fruit salad. It involved sunshine and shady trees and lemon meringue pie. It involved trying to pick up snippets of conversation made by French tourists (vous connaissez?). It involved an attempt at deep contemplation of Christian art.
After walking the museum over, I returned to a few paintings that especially spoke to me. I realized today that I have an official favorite painting at the Norton Simon. It is "St. Joseph and the Infant Christ", by Giovanni Battista Gaulli. I think I love this painting because it radiates relationship. The whole painting is about the deep love which exists between the Christ-Child and St. Joseph, it's beautiful because St. Joseph manifests such tender love for his adopted son. It's meaningful because it reminds me of the Book of Ruth, of the Book of Revelation, of spiritual adoption, and of God's complete and substantial love for me, his adopted daughter.

But I love this painting in a sort of ironic contrast to the rest of Christian art. I realized that the most important thing about Christian art, about beholding a Christian painting, is being made to see what is not visible.
I spent a long time looking at Francesco Bissolo's "The Annunciation", a painting which depicts Mary receiving the angel Gabriel' s words into her heart, and the Christ-Child into her womb: the birth of our salvation and the Magnificat. It's a warm and lovely painting. I stared at it for a long time before realizing that the most important visible thing in that painting is an Honorable Bird: the Holy-Spirit-as-dove hovering---radiantly and slightly---at the top of the painting. The presence and power of God is often hard to see, it is even invisible sometimes, as was the unborn Christ dwelling within Mary.

This painting struck me because, as I gazed at it, I realized that the Dove of Primal Importance, the Honorable Bird, resides in me. I am the visible element in the painting, imbued with the often intangible presence of God. Wow.

But there is one more painting which today brought me closer to the contemplation of the invisible. It's "Madonna and Child with Book" by Raffaello Sanzio.

This one, while showing the incarnate body of Christ, actually points to the eternal, invisible reality of God. Mary and the Christ-Child sit reading a prayer book. Here is Christ, the one who created Mary and the entire landscape behind them, sitting in his incarnate form, reading about his future death and resurrection. Here is God, the God who always IS, rendered in the past as a child, contemplating his own future acts. At the time of the painting, all the work of redemption had been accomplished--Christ was seated on the throne in heaven, interceding for us: it is a meditation piece concerned with the constant presence, the constant being, of God. It is eternity past, present, and future all in one. Here is Mary, teaching her son about his own nature, as he sits in her arms, the arms that he himself created as the "Firstborn of all creation". God very God, here with us as creator, redeemer, and word. Here is the description given with the painting:

"The inscription in the book introduces the ninth hour, or Nones of the Canonical Offices, recited daily by all monastic communities. The Nones commemorates Christ's Crucifixion and Death. With eyes turned to heaven, the Christ Child contemplates His own sacrifice as man's Redeemer."

I need to see Christian art. I need to present my eyes with things that invite them to believe and worship: it's so good for my soul. So today church was held in an airy museum, and the Eucharist was a slice of lemon meringue pie, imbibed under the acrylic gazes of penitents St. Francis and St. Jerome.

The Best Books of 2011: as told by Me

Please note that these books are arranged in no important order, and that exactly 0 of them were published in 2011. Well, ahem:

Best Books of 2011
Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner
Autobiography of a Reformed Jewish girl turned Orthodox Jew turned Episcopalian. It's beautifully written, intelligent, meaningful, and hilarious. As a friend described it, "I kind of hate her. It's like, I love her, but I want to be her at the same time".

Operating Instructions, Traveling Mercies, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
All of these are autobiographical non-fiction. These books I group together because it took reading through the first two of them before I loved Anne Lamott. At first, I passionately hated her. Though I disagree with some of the things she says, I've ultimately learned a lot from her. Anne Lamott stretched my understanding of sin, love, and faith. She's also hilarious and a very good writer. The third book, Bird by Bird, is primarily advice for beginning writers.

Housekeeping and Home by Marilynne Robinson
Two lovely texts by the patron saint of creative writing. I love this woman. The only problem with her writing is that I love all of it completely. It's a mystical experience every time. Her stories are all slow moving, and I love this, because she writes at the pace of my own soul. Home is the sequel to Gilead, an epistolary novel and one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I cried through both of them. Housekeeping is a simply exquisite work of fiction. It's beautiful language, image, and narrative.

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
This fall I tried to read more plays and this is what came of it. I mean, this is my favorite out of the dozen or so that I read. This is the play from which we get the more familiar film, My Fair Lady. I have to say that George Bernard Shaw is generally heavily political and long-winded. I liked Pygmalion because I think he was more focused on real human interaction: Eliza, Prof. Higgins, and the relationship between them. It was entirely enjoyable, if enjoyable includes both the hilarious and the heart-wrenching.

Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster
Another epistolary novel. It's perfect fall reading, as it's a book about school. Everybody knows that books about school and orphans make for good reading. It's humorous, sweet and makes me want to go to an all-girls college.

Phantastes and At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald
George MacDonald is the patron saint of everything. I love this man. This year, I re-read Phantastes after reading At the Back of the North Wind. He's just so good at what he does. What does he do? He takes gigantic, universal themes and gives them to you in beautiful, gloriously-simple fairy tales. He's bursting with truth, light, and beauty. It's like carrying a star in your pocket. It's wonderful.

Mystery and Manners by Flannery O' Connor
Another book largely about writing. I have a secret delight in reading writers talking about the craft of writing. It makes me feel better about my own lack of discipline in that area. In this book, Flannery mockingly and helpfully presents the writing life and the purpose of writing.

Revelation by St. John & the Holy Spirit
Not a first read, but this year Revelation suddenly made sense. I think I made it past all of the bewildering discussions of "pre vs. post-trib" and finally came to see the drama of the book itself. I love it; it's well written, mystical, prophetic, and, as I've recently discovered, unbelievably straightforward. God wins! Revelation is a new favorite.

Pensées by Pascal
Read this for school, back in the early days of 2011 when I was still a student. I loved this because it's like philosophy for the literary. It is beautifully written and has a heart. I don't know how else to say it.

Emma by Jane Austen
Of course I've seen the movies 12,000 times. But, I've somehow never made it through the book before. I'm amazed upon this read to see aspects of myself in Emma Woodhouse. I, too, fall prey to my own imaginative speculations. Shocking, I know.

Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
I didn't like Henry James before I read it, and I didn't even like this work until I was about 150 pages in, but I did really enjoy it. I was surprised, which is the main thing. The characters feel like real people. Good work, Henry.

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
Hard to categorize, but harder to read. Boethius sort of socks you in the belly and makes you consider life's hardest questions. Why is there suffering? Boethius can tell you. Read him.

I don't generally like "best of" lists. But now I've posted for the last time in 2011. Ha!
Let's all choose to believe that I'll post more frequently in 2012. Bonne Année!