Adolescents :: Adults

"Sometimes the adolescents cannot be told apart from the adults."

- My co-worker in regard to Canadian Geese that we saw today

Said comment was made in regard to the mating habits, patterns, and time-frame of the geese, yet I feel like it is so much more profound than that, in regard to humans and their coming-of-age rituals and patterns. "Sometimes the adolescents cannot be told apart from the adults."

It feels profound. I'm just not quite sure how.

on partnering with God...

Once upon a time, there was a mouse and elephant, who were best friends. They hung out together all the time, the mouse riding on the elephant's back. One day, they crossed a wooden bridge, causing it to bow, creak, and sway under their combined weight. After they were across, the mouse, impressed over their ability to make such an impact, said to the elephant, "We sure shook up that bridge, didn't we?"

- Intercessory Prayer, by Dutch Sheets, p. 104

When we partner with God, we do see crazy things happen. When we allow him to move and work through us, we do see lives transformed, mountains moved, and bridges built. And the invitation to us is always to partner with God: to throw our gifts, our weight, and our passions in with his and to allow him to move powerfully in and through those.

Unfortunately, our tendency is... when cool things happen, we give ourselves far too much credit. All of a sudden, the focus is off of God, and on to our gifts, our weight, our passions, our prayers even. We consider ourselves the elephant, the movers and the shakers, the heavyweights, if you will.

We-- I-- need to remember who is the elephant and who is the mouse.

sometimes Listening is better than Sweating

For those of you who don't know, I spent Spring Break 2009 down in New Orleans, with NU students, doing Katrina Relief... while I won't necessarily blog a lot on this experience, I did want to share this one reflection from KRUP (Katrina Relief Urban Plunge):

Our first Monday in New Orleans, we went down in Port Sulfur (where the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed through in 2005). It’s a narrow peninsula (about ½ mile across) with the Mississippi on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other. When the hurricane came through, both levees were breached, and this area turned into a basin with 15-25 feet of standing water. It emptied, and then filled again, when Hurricane Rita came through less than a month later.

We spent the day listening to Ted Turner, a local pastor and community organizer. He took us to where his house had been, and pointed out his refrigerator, stuck 20 feet in the air in a tree behind where his house had been, where it had landed when the waters receded. Despite having lived there for 15 years prior to Katrina, when he returned home after evacuation, he drove past his driveway, because there wasn’t enough left of his house or surrounding landmarks for him to recognize it. Less than 20% of the community has returned, post-Katrina (3.5 years later).

To be honest, I think some of the students were a bit frustrated that we were just listening to stories, rather than "doing real work." But as we listened to him all day, I was struck by the idea that part of our "real work" was to listen to people’s stories, and to take them home with us… it is these stories that change us, change our perspectives, and make the trip so much more meaningful. Otherwise, we’re just hammering nails and putting studs together to form a wall. It is the stories that put the heart in what we do; it is the stories that draw us back; and from the stories, we work.

It often does not feel like work to listen. But unless we listen, often times our work is awkwardly or ineptly placed. And it does not have nearly the transforming power that it could have, if we were actually working for something bigger.

This is Pastor Ted's "house" (or where it used to be). The tree in the distance houses his refrigerator.

hoarding junk

I began cleaning my room this morning, starting with the disaster zone (under the bed). Aside from finding several large living and dust bunnies who were thriving, growing and multiplying, I also found a TON of junk...

... half-used pieces of lined paper (yes, kids, back in the day, we actually used notebook paper)
... coffee-flavored gum left over from the summer after my freshman year in college
... empty glue-bottles
... other people's stuff that I've "borrowed" over the last few years
... left-over McDonald's kid's meal toys

Basic gist? I'm a hoarder. I keep everything, even if I will never use it again. It is extremely hard for me to throw ANYTHING away, even old and holey socks.

But as I was rummaging through my junk and making myself throw some things away, I started wondering (to myself)... I wonder if the same is true in life sometimes. I wonder if there is emotional, spiritual, physical, mental junk that we hold to, stashing it under the bed or in dark corners, that we don't need to hold on to? I wonder if at times, we are hoarders of our emotional junk in ways that are unnecessary? We have some of this baggage not because we cannot get rid of it, but because we are too lazy to deal with it, or too attached to it to let go?

... junk from a previous relationship (or a continued emotional attachment)
... hidden anger at a friend
... feelings of entitlement in a given situation (I deserve(d)...)

Please don't get me wrong; there are some things that happen to us or that we wrestle with that are outside of our control. It would be petty, insensitive, and naive of me to suggest that all the junk in our lives is there because we are unwilling to part with it. But I do wonder if there aren't places in which we do hold on to emotional/spiritual junk that we don't need to...

At the end of the day, dust bunnies can appear soft and fuzzy. We like our junk: it's familiar and it's comfortable. But it rarely, if ever, makes a positive impact on anything. It just makes a mess.

Sometimes it's just time to chuck the junk and clean under the bed.

the plant that never dies...

So I have this plant which I like to call some variation of "resurrection plant," "indestructible fern," "the-plant-which-never-dies," or "the ha-ha-kill-me-if-you-can plant." It's a normal green fern-type plant; very mundane, does not appear to have extraordinary qualities from an external perspective. But, like in all things, looks can be deceiving...

Those of you who know me well know that I can be pretty forgetful at times. So, while in reality, my thumb is pretty darn green (thanks, mom for the great gardening education), my forgetfulness often nullifies the effectiveness of the green thumb.

Translation: I am a repeat-offender plant murderer because I forget to water them. In 6 years of owning house plants, unless you count the fake plastic ones, not one has fully survived. Until this year.

See, this resurrection plant is very very wonderful for people like me. Every 3-4 days, it completely wilts down (we're talking flat on the bookshelf, people). I'm used to this state of plants. Normally, I would attempt to water it and then say a quick eulogy, because plants in this state ordinarily would be on the fast track to the happy miracle grow land. Yet, somehow, this freakish plant, when watered, instantly resurrects. It is incredibly forgiving. Within a few hours, it is upright, green, and very much alive. Even this past week, when I was out of town for 10 whole days and forgot to water it for that entirety... the wilted, dead plant is now fully alive again.

And the crazy thing is... because miracle plant is so obvious and predictable in telling me when it needs water, when I water it, I remember to water the other two plants on my desk. So, not only do I have one happy vibrant plant, I actually have three happy vivacious plants.

What's the take-home here? I'm not entirely sure, yet. God is not forgetful like I am. He does not forget to care for his children. But he does delight for us to ask for his living water... He doesn't force it on us...

Here's my thought: my plant is incredibly good at telling me when it needs water (it always wilts down). One drought of water is not enough. And by its overt and obvious call for water, the other plants likewise get water. In other words, awareness of need, awareness of emptiness and call for sustenance (water, in this case) results in life greater than just that of just the one plant.

I wonder if we were more like this plant, in a spiritual sense, if we all wouldn't be better off? In other words, rather than holding out, pretending we didn't need the living water God offers, if we overtly cried out, expressing our deep need... not only would we receive the water we needed, but those around us would also be watered as well.

"come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters" (Isaiah 55:1a)