good in tensions

"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!"
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from The Song of Hiawatha, part 10

"In the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead." - James 2:17


I was never in Boy Scouts, so I don't know much about bows and arrows. But I do know that those flimsy, plastic ones or the Nerf version that I used to play with are nothing compared to a real, English longbow. Reading about English longbows, made from a piece of yew wood about 6ft long, just made me feel like a little Camelot kid, brought me back to my wistful, medieval imagination. A longbow could fire an arrow over 200 yds easy. Range and power, which brought the Britons to victory.

photo credit: http://www.solarnavigator.net/sport/archery.htm

Power, because there is tension.

Perhaps why I find my faith to have little bearing on the weight of my real life is because I misunderstand tension. When I hear about faith being accompanied by action, I think of

believe the right things + do the right things = good life.

And I think of the good life as the easy, relaxed kind of life. Things ought to go my way when I get my theology right and I practice social justice, right?

But what if faith and action are not merely two parts of an equation, but are tensed together like the cord and the bow? What I mean is, sometimes our faith can stretch us only when we act, and sometimes our actions can only stretch us when we have faith. Which means sometimes our faith can be difficult. Our actions may prove to be costly.

Right before James 2:17, the scripture gives a real life example of faith without action: "go, I wish you well" without doing anything to provide for that to be a reality. It's a classic example of good intentions. But the other end, of merely doing good without faith, appears to be a contradiction. How do you "do good" without believing what that "good" is?

I don't have clear answers. But I think that being strictly "answers only" or a "questions only" seems to me a powerless kind of life, a piece of wood rotting on the ground. String tangled in a mess. But maybe there is something in seeing the cross as nailed together by mercy and judgment, earth as a battleground between heaven and hell. I myself, a mix of sinner and saint. Simul justus et peccator.

If Romans 7 is right, then a Christian's spiritual life is always in tensions. It's not about resolving that tension (cutting the string, breaking the bow), but living in that tension well. To grieve well when I sin, to rejoice well when I triumph in Christ.

Lord, let me not be numb.

I want to have more than good intentions. I want to be good in tensions.

running on E

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." (Jesus)


You and I know the terrifying glare of the indicator light.

(photo credit: http://spiralwayjsj.blogspot.com/2012/01/running-on-empty.html)

I drive a Prius, and when the fuel gauge is on E, the last indicator bar blinks repeatedly. The fact that I can still get 50 miles on my last gallon is inconsequential. Its insistent blinking, while on the periphery of my vision, annoys me to the point of desperation. I am afraid that when I go up a hill, the little fuel I have left won't make it into the fuel injector and my car will cough and sputter to a stop.

But when I fill up the tank, comfort and ease flood into my life. Thus, I can drive without worry for at least the rest of the week. It's kind of like mood swings. Or the spiritual life. You and I both want it to be full so that we can grow with ease. But is that really how it is supposed to be?

Which makes me wonder: how is it that spiritual "fuel" gets spent? And how do I "refuel"? Am I ever certain of how much spiritual power there is in me? My thinking about this has changed recently, thanks to the Beatitudes.

Spiritual fuel, I think, is that zeal that gets spent when I am determined to pray, to read my Bible, to help others. I used to think that it was a kind of eagerness that stirred within me. And when I didn't sense that drive, maybe I thought I needed a revival, a refilling. So, I would go to retreats, or pick up a new devotional book, or visit any other spiritual pit stop in my attempt to refuel. My spiritual life has been this constant battle against emptiness.

But maybe Jesus has been telling me something different, something paradoxical, which most likely means that it is true.

All this time I have been talking and thinking about my spiritual life as if it something I need to maintain (like the fuel level in my car). It's a constant, uphill struggle. But what Jesus says here is that those who declare a spiritual bankruptcy, those who are completely spent on their own righteousness--they will be filled with riches of Christ's righteousness.

I think Lewis is right when he wrote in his Letters to Malcolm: "I have a notion that what seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling and contend with the greatest disinclination. For these, perhaps, being nearly all will, come from a deeper level than feeling."

Maybe God is weaning me away from these fossil fuels to alternative (altar-native?) forms of energy. (Sorry. I'll stop.) Or maybe it is a weaning away from the concept of fuel and drive and progression in general. Could God be pleased especially when I still choose to worship and praise and pray when I am running on empty? Could this be the real engine of spiritual living?

The indicator light tells me I need something. And if it is on all the time, I think that's a good thing for me: to know that I constantly need God. Needing Him, instead of using Him.

Mourning has broken

"Anger is the besetting temptation of those who have begun to see things clearly." (Evagrius)

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." (Jesus)


Of course, I am not angry. I am just an Asian American Christian male, who has been told by my culture and sub-cultures that I cannot be angry, that I cannot even be sad, and that I have to keep it together. Angry just doesn't cover it. I am repressed, lonely, and seething. I am wretched. Lord have mercy.

I am discovering that I haven't learned to mourn, that I haven't learned to cry. I have never learned to accept myself, or to believe in myself. These things I have had to learn only pretty recently, and I found that I am poor student. A poor student in the deep, personal things.

I don't want to rant or to bleed sentimentality. But I know that if I tell the truth, then I somehow find myself in the chorus of voices that whisper the truth. I know that humility only comes through honesty, or rather that there is no difference between honesty and humility. Christians talk about humility, and I want to talk humble. I want to tell you who I am, but I cannot do that fully. At least not yet.

I did a google image search on "mourning," and I kept finding pictures of these butterflies called "Mourning Cloaks."

Their name reminded me of something. They reminded me of those veils women wear when in mourning, which had always struck me as slightly ironic. I had thought it was an effort to "hide" one's mourning, which, however, would only draw more attention to themselves. But that is a perspective of someone outside the veil. Perhaps the veil is not for the world, but for the mourner. What I am saying is, seeing through a veil from the view of the mourner is seeing, paradoxically, clearly. Partially blind and through a grim, fragmentary mesh, the world seems dim and broken. Incomplete. And that is largely the truth.

And maybe this is a stretch here, but if brokenness is on the way to wholeness, and honesty on the way to brokenness, then this veiled picture of the world, of society, of myself is exactly the semi-opaque chrysalis into which I must go before transformation will happen.

Okay. My sentimentality just dipped into poetics. I can't help it. I am a jar. And mourning has broken.