Dismantled

I am so determined not to categorize, divide, and shelve myself or anyone else, but when I see those 10-things-to-know-about-introverts-and-extroverts, I read them anyway. I have that...I am that way...I am NOT that way...wait, which one am I again? They are helpful to some people. I should just know better to avoid them by now.
Not what I wanted to write about.
Here it is.

The human soul goes deep. Deeper than the owner could ever explore on his own. The soul depths are dark, hot, full of gears that grind and whine and set off sparks. The monsters on the edges of maps...they are kind compared to the dragons that haunt the depths of a broken soul. Most of us build a neat cover over the pit and hope the wood we used doesn't burst into flame. We live above ground, wincing at the occasional crash and roar that leaks through the cover of the pit.
It's not that we live in a tiny space in the attic. By God's grace, we take over that dark space, shove the pit further down, oil the gears, fix the broken.
But it's deep.
Endless, it looks to me.
But I can't build up here. Not what He has put in my mind. The fortress He's thinking of has roots that need to go to the bottom of me. The foundation must stretch down and down and down, leaving not a speck of dark.
Not impossible, not easy. So.
Here begins the dismantling. He pulls up one board at a time. (It takes so long) He tosses the board aside, and I try not to look at the black hole He's made. Honestly, word picture aside, the stench of hell that rises through that is enough to make me gag.
I could hate myself. 
that thought wells around me and only His grace keeps me from drowning.
The filth is in me. I am that. My depths stink like hell. Because of all those steps I took away from Holy God. Because I looked away. I could be perfect but one sin, and the dark would still be there.
God, I thought you purified me. I thought I was spotless.

You are.

Then what is this filth?

That is you.

That doesn't make sense. 

I created sense, remember? 
I feel Him looking at me with perfect love. Perfect, perfect, perfect. The definition of love. He grips another board and looks at me, and I nod, another step of faith for me. He stands next to me, and though the stench thickens, I feel something else. Solidarity.
How can you look at me that way if I am this? 
He smiles. (I could stare at that smile and nothing else)
Now you ask the right question. You are pure to me. You are not pure to you. Is that sense to you?

I disagree with you, don't I?

Every time you look away. 

I want to never look away. 

Then let me make you pure in your eyes, and heal you, and destroy your dragons. 
I look at the hole, and all the boards He has yet to pull up, and the sparks of the gear just below jumping up onto my clean platform.
Let you take this all away?
When He looks into my eyes with all the pleading I have ever seen in one gaze, my knees weaken with a wave of fervent gratitude. This is love, that He would go with me and tear down every cover, heal every brokenness, smooth the rough, lighten the dark, because a true love would never leave its lover less than perfect.
Please. Let me dismantle you and build you anew. Spotless and perfect in your eyes as well as mine. 

God, if you do this with me I will hardly be able to breathe for gratitude. 

You will breathe my Spirit. When we descend into the dark (together) and mend the broken bones and make firm what is too loose and loose what is too firm and you feel as if your very flesh were being ground away by the roughness inside you(true story) I will be with you so you will never be alone. 

I will never be alone?

Never.

And you will rebuild me into perfection, but it will be your perfection(yours is best, anyway)and I will have no claim but that I can see it through these eyes you gave me?

Now you speak sense.

Then dismantle me, my God, and be ever more one with me(I mean, more every moment, every breath I take of your Spirit) and I will follow you wherever you lead me in myself. 
He pulls up another board, and another, offering grace and rest when the stench is too much and the hate rises. We will be here as long as I can see. I (hope)will never enjoy my safe perch above the pit. The first gear is pride, I can see that, and it's growling and belching smoke like a dragon already, but He's with me, and that is enough.

Head-top garden

Would you like the top of your head taken off? It's worth it, really. 
The gospel holds a mystery that the wisest men have yet to completely understand. It is astonishing every time I really look at it. Paul writes about it often. Colossians is where I found it this time.

Paul writes that it is Christ in us, giving us our only hope of glory. I could lean on that word "only" for my own sake. There is no other way to find glory. No other way to inherit light and escape darkness.
"giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." 1:12-14
All that is our only reason to hope for glory. He has qualified us by putting himself in us, Christ in us.
"of which I became a minister according to the divine office which was given me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." 1:25-27

This is of the kind of thing that takes the top of my head off and leaves my mind unprotected from the stars. God must have a whole garden of head-tops by now, and wishes we would stop growing them back and hiding from him. I wonder what kind of flowers or plants they would produce. If faith could be a plant, what would it be? Anyway.

It's a mystery that's been hidden before the world began, and now it's BEING MADE REAL IN US. Sit back. Drink some tea. Think about eternity, and the riches of the glory of a mystery we are permitted to live in. It's rich. It's overflowing with grace. It makes you ready to experience and live in and become glory. Christ, the King of the Universe, in you. In you! Making you perfect.
I need more tea.

Do not dare to take away the richness of this grace by trying to do it yourself.
"The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Psalm 51:17
Let your spirit break. It's all right. The Almighty God will not despise you, so you need not despise yourself. He is offering his own Spirit, but yours must break first.
My spirit seems to take me far, at times. But Inevitably, I fall. This is Inevitable Reality. This is Brokenness. Broken wings cannot fly. I have no hope of glory. I can't reach it.
But God opens my eyes to these words, this Christ in me. It is so simple, and yet pervasive. Christ in me means me broken open and surrendered every day and in every part of who I am. All I am, given to Him. I'm not pulled in a hundred directions, though. Just one, and that is how it's simple. I know which way to go because of his gracious hand around mine. My flesh wants to go back, but my spirit wants to go forward. With the strength of Christ in me, I overcome my flesh. That simple, that difficult to surrender to leaning on his strength. Every day I have to remember that I CANNOT DO IT. Not at all. The more I lean on him, the more I realize that I have less, so much less, than I thought.
Thank you, Jesus, for your sure guidance. Because of you, I know where I am going, and I can go there with you.

Colossians is full of beautiful things about growing, maturing in Christ, strangling-slaughtering-hating-destroying the flesh(really, that's the only way to go about it). The frustrating part is that the flesh hides so well among the good things I do. I wish I had a bloodhound's nose when it comes to sniffing it out. I have to kill it right away, no mercy, no pity.

Oh, I am looking for that blessed hope, the glory that is the answer to the mystery, when I will be pure spirit and have no flesh to persecute.

Keep your eyes open for the works of this glorious mystery. I promise they will astonish you.

By the way, I have a possible lead to publish the first book, which I might call Seal up the Stars, which would be very exciting and glorious indeed. :) So, you may pray about that. God really took that thing in his hands because I barely had to do anything except have a wonderful relative named Amy Gingerich that works at Herald Press. She is definitely getting treasures in heaven.

Paris

We made a wise decision in Paris, at least one. The Louvre is large. It looks large on the outside, more than my eyes could take in, but inside, it is beyond my eyes and legs and mind. If there were not signs, we would have been lost forever and had to befriend marble statues of Diana the Huntress in order to survive. (She would supply food and protection, of course, from the rest of the bloodthirsty statues, really, you have no idea how many battle scenes we stumbled into).
On a sign we saw a picture of the Mona Lisa and an arrow pointing forward, and we veered to right instead.
"I'm not ready to see her yet," Sheila said.
"Neither am I," I said.
"You guys are funny," Miranda said.
We found a small convoluted section of something Greekish-statues and other things.(I'm sorry, but there have been too many museums and enough art to make a mottled pile of marble in the back of my mind).  Convoluted means small alleys and half levels and a final spilling out into the main section again. Toward Mona. We soon followed a crowd. They stood before her diminutive, serene, mysterious face, a dozen deep and many wide, held back by security guards standing with their hands carefully together. Our camerawoman fought her way to the front while I stood on the side and finally understood why people were there and why pictures are not the same. That smile still lives in my mind, a mystery. I envy da Vinci the time spent with the woman who smiled that smile. Paris was worth visiting to see that smile with my own eyes.
Now, to the wise decision. Our feet were sore, and we found a beautiful tall gallery, white tiles and green potted plants, a garden of marble sculptures.
We sat down on a wide white bench and drew and wrote and drew. (Two artists and an aspiring writer). I sat under the rearing gaze of a wild horse and its rider. The form was so living the mane seemed to fly in the wind, foam to arise at its mouth.
I sat and wrote, "The glass of Paris is full of my reflection." I wrote of living near this Louvre and making it know me as well as I wanted to know it and its marble arches, marble myths, marble love stories. I wrote tiny, barely-seen stories of three or four sentences. I could sit and not create, surrounded by the remaking of so many tales. I look back and wonder how I did not wish for Aslan to come and breathe them to life, but such wishing would be selfish, because many of the victims would rather remain stone, I am sure. I wanted the wild horse to live, just to see if his wild driver would ever contain him. He reminded me of Maggie Stiefvater's cople isce, fighting the call of the sea.
A woman sat beside us for a few moments, and when we began to talk among ourselves, she alerted us to the fact that she was from the States, in the south somewhere. Her last experience with knowing someone's language without their being aware had been entertaining but also more information than she wanted. She-an English teacher from Kentucky or Tennessee, there with a friend-showed us some pictures she had taken of sculptures-mostly of soldiers or gods carrying swords and wearing helmets and nothing else. Her invented captions were very funny, if a little crude, but most of the sculptures were that way, so I can hardly blame her for making jokes.
So our wise decision was to sit down.
I saw women walk through in four inch heels and I thanked my Maker that I never have to wear those for any reason.
I listened to an angry Chinese father trying to explain to his wife and children the importance of art.
I wished the horse would let loose with a thunderous trumpet and that Jesus would come back and shine through the glass roof. I wished that right now, anyway.
I did not expect this: to enter the Louvre, you must enter the pyramid in front and go downstairs. The museum begins below the visible museum. The three smaller glass pyramids are skylights to the lower floors.
I have not spoken yet of the crepes and pastries. Paris has creperies-special crepe restaurants- and they make crepes filled anything you like. The savory ones are nearly as good as the sweet.
And bread. The baguettes are perfect to tuck under your arm and take on a picnic.
We stayed with a friendly but strict lady, Cynthia. Her husband, Jean Christophe, was very kind, and her little girls shouted "Bonjour" every time they saw us.
We waited for a long time to climb the Eiffel Tower, and indeed, we climbed it. I do not know how many stairs, but it was worth every one. I saw the moon in the sky while I looked across the city, and I thought, "how small the world is. The same God loves us all, and gives us the same moon to smile on us."
People are the same, the world over. They have different faces, different hands, different voices, but their hearts are the same. They long to be warmed by the true God, and those that have been warmed let it out in kind, kind deeds.
We heard Holy Mass in French at the Notre Dame Cathedral. I saw incense and a crowd of hushed, shocked tourists, and I grinned, knowing they could not escape the presence of God there. They never can, but I am sure each one of them knew in their hearts, so similar to mine, that He was there.
Outside the cathedral, a lady gave us rice to hold in our hands, and small sparrows perched on our fingers and ate the rice grains. Now I wonder if they were kin to the lastavica, Island of the World, because they seemed to speak to me with their fearlessness.

Unseparated

Hunger for God.
What is it?
Is it the reason for the ache deep in me that nothing seems to completely soothe? Reading that Holy Word, soaking it into my bones, seems to soften it. Lifting my face to the sky that seems to hold my Maker, lifting my consciousness to He Who is the object of my hunger, and so must be every answer I need-that fills me up, short moments at a time.
But who could know what the ache is? How can it be something that nothing tangible could fill, not words and not touch. It is always there.
I want to know why. Why, why, why do my days seem to fill with almost bitter yearning for a God who could break me? Who bends me until I think I will break.
The bitter becomes sweet with time, but still, it is an unanswered question. This hunger, this yearning, is different than any other. No bread can fill it, no human companionship, no vision.
I know the answer lies somewhere in my own creation. I am made to yearn for something more, but the sweet yearning grew into aching melancholy the day our ancestors first turned away from the Answer.

The hunger is what makes fellowship with Jesus so sweet. It is good. It rescues us from looking only inward rather than upward. I recognize that. But what is it?

I didn't expect to ever know. I thought it was a lifelong quest, a question that would rasp out between pants when I finally reached the Great White Throne. I was right. I will always be searching, but a part of it has been given to me through a story and a friendship and five week trek through Europe.

I read Michael O'Brien's Island of the World on trains and piazza steps and hotel beds. While I read the story of Josip, the epic, stirring, illuminating story of Josip, I thought about many things.
First, what is this hunger for God.
Second, why is it inescapably easy to connect with certain people. I dislike how this sounds. It does nothing to capture the magic of a true kindred spirit.
Third, what is love, what is love, what is love. I don't know why that is third. Josip did not distract me from that question. I don't purpose to talk about that, but perhaps it will appear.

So, hunger for God, and hunger for certain people.
I have a friend. I tell her that beneath her, through her, runs a deep current of...muchness. Words fail me. Being with her is like breathing in a rich, earthy, healing scent. I understand her somehow, and feel understood, just by lying next to her on a blanket, staring up at the stars. We do not have everything in common. Our passions are not the same, though similar in ways. Something about us is drawn together, something deep within.

I read Island slowly because I had to pause often to place each message of truth where it belonged. Josip undertakes his final journey, and his words to one he loves shocked me like a lightening bolt, an answer to my questions of yearning and connection.

"A man is himself and no other," Josip says. "He is an island in the sea of being. And each island is as no other. The islands are connected because they have come forth from the sea, and the sea flows between them. It separates them yet unites them, if they learn to swim."

We are all separate. We are all islands, never fully understood by another island. 

I pondered the other islands that surround me, and my thoughts stumbled on God, from whom I have come forth. He is the sea, He is the air, He is the way to unseparate myself, slowly, from those I love and long to love. He and I are unseparated.  He understands me, this lonely island. He allows me to understand Him, carefully, perfectly, making sure not to break me before He is finished with me.

This is the longing. I am made to be one with others. I am made to be one with my Maker. Always, whether I have tasted His perfect fellowship or not, even before I surrendered to His will, my very being longs to be one with Him. He understands me perfectly! How crazy! Nuts. Cashew, as my friend Sue would say.

And these people that float around me...sometimes the closer I get, the more I realize how separated we are. Compared to the unseparateness I can have with the Father. And yet the joy of kindred minds, hearts, and spirits is a great, great gift. A treasure I am unworthy to hold, but will cherish with gratitude.

I said I didn't purpose to discuss love and what it is, but I cannot resist. We float as lonely islands, growing close to and understanding those God has given us to understand. The loneliness is softened by these gifts. Just now, a great gift I have been given is to have a young man ask to understand me. To be close to me. When I look across the waves around me, I am most days so surrounded by islands that look back with love, I must strive to see the sea. But the islands ever move, sending the foaming sea far up my shores, and the unseparateness of my land and the God-Who-is-the-Sea is sweet, sweet fellowship.

Firenze

The people in this country want to know me, and where I come from, and when I say, "Ohio," it is not a joke. We-Americans-and they-Italians-are sincere about where we live. We will not step away from home, but rather welcome the outside in.
Florence comes alive with the night-I've never heard such a loud, celebratory night. If ever a city was choked on magic, it would be this one. Everything is golden, more so after the sun goes down and the streets are lit by window displays of gleaming leather on gleaming mannequins. Gelaterias on every corner, sometimes two.
If the carabinieri were to order every tourist, Italian and otherwise, out of their city, the streets just might be bone-empty. The city workers would be left, with their long handled brooms and street cleaning machines. But they would hardly have any trash to collect, without their thousands of eager and messy invaders.
If you walk aimlessly down the streets of Florence, as we did, you will find corners that smell like leather because there are so many shops and their doors are open. The fancier hotels welcome you with frigid air. No one seems to dream of hoarding air conditioning to themselves.
After the third day of gelato, we learned to watch the portions given to customers before us, to see if they would get a generous three euros cup or a miserly one. Stay away from the piazzas, our friend Teresa told us. Every business on the squares pays crazy rent just to be there. They charge a lot, but you get to look at the Duomo or the copy of David while you eat your ice cream.
This is how we met Teresa: we were walking down an alley that led to many more alleys, looking for a shoe store with decent prices, and Teresa stepped out of a caffe and asked us if we needed help. We told her that we wanted shoes, and she began to give directions. She wore pearls and a neat blue dress and comfortable, pretty shoes. Her hair was grey and every other thing she said was so eccentric or good humored that I laughed. Teresa was celebrating not having a tumor after all, and she wanted to give back to God by helping us.
She asked if we wanted to go the most beautiful bar in Firenze, or just a normal one. We smiled and said the most beautiful one. What else could we say? She wanted to celebrate. She called us the 'three graces', because we looked so nice. (Italians like Mennonites quite a bit)
She led us around corners and down streets, explaining the history of Florence in connection to buildings we passed. She was an American married to an Italian, so communication was not a problem. (If anyone is going to Florence, I can connect you with her daughter, Raffaella, a tour guide, one of the best, Teresa says.) We stopped at a market, and she introduced us to Elena and her sister, and then Amir, a Palestinian. "He is the most beautiful man," she said. "He's married, and so am I, but we can enjoy God's creation, no?" We laughed, and were a little underwhelmed, but he wasn't ugly, to be sure, and very nice. We stopped at a shoe store next and she introduced us to Samuel, who promised to give us good deals. Everywhere she went, she told the news that the hospital tests had come back clear, and she was healed. She was trailing joy and leaving everyone smiling in her wake. It was wonderful.
The Riviore was a bar on Pizza Uffizi, overlooking the copy of David. Five euros just to sit down.(so we didn't) She walked in and said something like this to the man at the counter, "Paolo, God has healed me. I must celebrate with these three graces I have met. Make me something beautiful." She asked if we drink alcohol, and we said no, and she said she didn't either, though she almost could today, and she told Paolo, something beautiful without alcohol. He smiled and turned away. "He is a cocktail expert," she assured us.
He did something with strawberries and something else delicious, in beautiful goblets, and then he set out pistachios and chips and crackers and we stood by the counter and celebrated while waiters in suits bustled by and smiled at us. It was beautiful. It was all funny and grand, to walk into a place full of elegant people and ask Paolo for something beautiful. Teresa asked if we wanted anything else, and I asked, where could we find men's shoes, and Paolo wrote down a place on a card and gave it to me. I smiled at him, but judging by what he was wearing, he cared a little more about quality and less about price than I did.
Teresa took a picture with us, and gave us her email, and kissed us on both cheeks before she left to tell her worried nieces the good news. She celebrated with us, three strangers, before telling her family. It was the best first day in a city that we could hope for.
I have so many other stories that I could tell. Italy has been full of overwhelmingly kind people. The only thing I tired of in Florence was the vendors selling lasers and squishy toys and scarves. These poor Italians cannot find jobs, but I wish they would sell something less annoying. Scarves aren't annoying, I suppose.
Our last night in Florence, we sat on the steps to the Duomo and watched people. A group of young people sat on our left. I couldn't tell exactly where they were from, because some spoke Spanish and some English. One guy played guitar beautifully, using a pen and elastic bands as a capo. They were a little hippie. In the middle of a song, he paused and leaned over and asked Miranda if he could borrow the ponytail holder on her wrist. She gave it to him, and he said she could have it back whenever she wished.
"Keep it," she said.
"Like a present?" he said, smiling.
"Sure," she said. he nodded, and bent over the strings again, trying to read the lyrics from his phone.
We walked back to our hotel slowly, the streets more full at 10:00 than three hours before. When we boarded the train to Rome the next morning, we seemed to step out of a time machine, as if we had spent years instead of days in the golden city and now we had to learn how to breathe oxygen and walk on normal pavement and weave our way through normal, working Italians instead of a steady stream of people from other places.