John Donne on Friday

La Carona

I

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,

Weaved in my low devout melancholy,

Thou which of good, hast, yea art treasury,

All changing unchanged Ancient of days,

But do not, with a vile crown of frail bays,

Reward my muse’s white sincerity,

But what thy thorny crown gained, that give me,

A crown of glory, which doth flower always;

The ends crown our works, but thou crown’st our ends,

For, at our end  begins our endless rest,

This first last end, now zealously possessed

With a strong sober thirst, my soul attends.

‘Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high,

Salvation to all that will is nigh.

 

 

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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The Silence of Saturday

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On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.  Luke 23:56b

John, in his gospel, records that Jesus’ last words from the cross on Friday were, “It is finished” (19:30). Luke records, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” (23:46b). Both Matthew and Mark have recorded as Jesus’ last words, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (Matt 27:46b; Mark 15:34b). These records of Jesus’ last words from the cross have always brought me immeasurable comfort. But then again, I know the full story. My eyes dart from the “it is finished” in John to the “Now on the first day of the week” of the resurrection story located just  a few inches lower on the page.

Chronologically speaking, I’m missing an entire day as I read along in my bible: the Sabbath. And, technically, that’s today: the day in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  I jump ahead to the end because I…

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John Donne on (Good) Friday

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

 

Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,

The intelligence that moves, devotion is,

And as the other spheres, by being grown

Subject to foreign motions, lose their own,

And being by others hurried every day,

Scarce in a year their natural form obey:

Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit

For their first mover, and are whirled by it.

Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the west

This day, when my soul’s form bends toward the east.

There I should see a sun, by rising set,

And by that setting endless day beget;

But that Christ on this Cross, did rise and fall,

Sin had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I’ almost be glad, I do not see

That spectacle of too much weight for me.

Who sees God’s face, that is self life, must die;

What a death were it then to see God die?

It made his own lieutenant Nature shrink,

It made his footstool crack, and the sun wink.

Could I behold those hands which span the poles,

And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?

Could I behold that endless height which is

Zenith to us, and to’our antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood which is

The seat of all our souls, if not of his,

Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn,

By God, for his apparel, ragged, and torn?

If on these things I durst not look, durst I

Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,

Who was God’s partner here, and furnished thus

Half of that sacrifice, which ransomed us?

Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,

They are present yet unto my memory,

For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards me,

O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;

I turn my back to thee, but to receive

Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.

O think me worth thine anger, punish me,

Bur off my rusts, and my deformity,

Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace,

That thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.

 

 

 

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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John Donne on Friday

From a sermon preached on Easter Day 1626

[Re-Compacted Bodies]

In natural death, there is Casus in separationem, The man, the person falls into a separation, a divorce of body and soul; and the resurrection from this fall is by re-union, the soul and body are re-united at the last day. A second fall in natural death, is Casus in dissolutionem, The dead body falls by putrefaction into a dissolution, into atoms and grains of dust; and the resurrection from this fall, is by re-efformation: God shall re-compact and re-compile those atoms and grains of dust, into that body, which was before: And then a third fall in natural death, is Casus in Dispersionem, This man being fallen into a divorce of body and soul, this body being fallen into a dissolution of dust, this dust falls into a dispersion, and is scattered unsensibly, undiscernibly upon the face of the earth; and the resurrection from this death, is by way of re-collection; God shall recall and re-collect all these atoms, and grains of dusts, and re-compact that body, and re-unite that soul, and so that resurrection is accomplished…

Where man’s buried flesh hath brought forth grass, and that grass fed beasts, and those beasts fed men,and those men fed other men, God that knows in which box of his cabinet all this seed pearl lies, in what corner of the world every atom, every grain of every man’s dust sleeps, shall recollect that dust, and then recompact that body,and then re-inanimate that man, and that is the accomplishment of all.

 

 

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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Words, Words, Wonderful Words

Words are powerful. I doubt anyone would argue with that. Anyone enjoying an average day on The Twitters understands the power of an ill-used or well-used word. With only 140 characters, Tweeters work hard to come up with that perfectly and tightly packaged thought; one ill placed word…and their good day swiftly swirls down the drain. Word vultures flock in to consume not only the tweet, but also the Tweeter herself; for this very reason, I’ve stopped having “original thoughts” on twitter because #ImAfeared and #ICantJamMyThoughtsInto140Characters.

But words are powerful. Words and word-phrases like: yes, I love you,  you’re beautiful, that post was inspiring, you did that really well!, I’m so happy to see you, etc. build people up and create life. And then there are words and word-phrases that do the opposite: no, try again, that wasn’t good enough,  just go away,  I hate you, etc; these words tear down and destroy those who are the intended hearing recipients. No one will argue with this; we’ve all–at one point or another–been on the receiving end of life-giving and death-dealing words and word phrases. I’ve been torn down by words and I’ve been built up by them; so have you.

So, words are powerful. But what I find so surprising as a member of this word-speaking group of people called humanity, is how often we still forget just how powerful words are. I recently had an encounter with a (let’s call him) colleague where I chose a word that was funny and wink-wink to me, but offensive to him. It took some time and some dialogue (the exchange of words) to figure out what had occurred. A simple word caused the disturbance. Yet we forget just how powerful words are…we just forget because we are surrounded by so  many and we so often use them carelessly.

But, words are powerful. As a theologian, I’ve been front-seat at a near knock-down drag-out argument over a word. I’ve actually been in those arguments; I’ve also rolled my eyes when a peer says, “Well, I’ve an issue with the words…” and I’m all #FacePalm. Those of us who have invested their lives in the pursuit of understanding the nuances of theology, know full well how powerful words are. From studies in Church History to Pastoral Care, students of theology know without a doubt how powerful words are; and, to some degree, it’s inexcusable when we forget this truth.  We don’t have the luxury of miss using words because often our congregants, our family and friends, and even the random strangers that follow us on twitter have been abused by words.

So, if words are important and we (theologians, pastors, leaders of the church) know just how important those words are, then why do we still try to use words that have caused a lot of damage to our people in the past? I can only chalk it up to the fact that those of us in authority over the sheep stop listening to the sheep, stop listening to their bleats of pain, hurt, anger, and fear. Why do we keep trying to stress “obedience” when so many people coming out of fundamentalism and legalism have been beaten up by that word? Why do we stress “submission” to a group of women coming out of churches where they were held down by that word? Why do we look at those men who have nearly died under the wait of  “headship” and “leadership” and still speak those words?  If our people have PTSD from the abuse of certain words (the above being a small sampling) why do we still use them? It’s not enough to say: well Paul used them so we should. It’s also not enough to try to find a new way to define such words (like: leading is serving) because, at best, our definitions (while true on many levels) are too ambiguous for the mind to understand and comprehend and at worst aren’t heard anyway because we lost our listener as soon as we used the dreaded word to begin with. And, let’s be honest, it’s really hard to pretty-up the club that was used to clobber your hearer to the point of death.

Since words are powerful and also since words have wounded our listeners, we need to use new words to discuss those old themes. How do we do this? A Friend once told me that he had a colleague who had an issue with the word-phrase “Law and Gospel.” I asked him, “Well, how did you work around that?” (at the time only understanding those two terms to define the biblical hermeneutic I ascribed to). He said, “Simple. I switched in ‘Command and Promise’ and ‘Death and Life.'”  With so many words at our fingertips and there for our use, why don’t we employ this word-switch tactic more often? Rather than talk of “obedience”, what if I said, “Just love God and love your neighbor because you have been radically loved”? Is not loving God and loving your neighbor the fulfillment of everything that qualifies for obedience?  Rather than talk of “submission” and “headship/leadership” I said, “Just love your husbands and wives”? Is that not that the goal of Paul’s exhortation in the first place? You might, to both statements, ask, “Well, how do I do that?” Or, “What does loving God/Neighbor/Husband/Wife look like?” It doesn’t matter how I answer those questions, because what’s happened is that the dialogue has been restored; I’ve not lost you. By eliminating the painful words and speaking with new words that you’ll listen to, I can enter into a dialogue with you. I can then say, “Well, submission is actually mutual…sit down, let’s talk more about this.” By carefully choosing words and by carefully listening to you, I can wade through your pain with you while keeping the channels of communication open.

To all those I’ve wounded with poorly chosen words: forgive me, please. To all those who are still listening to me, I promise you: I’m listening to you and to your words because they are so important and tell me how to choose my words. May the Lord help me never to forget just how powerful words are.

 

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John Donne on Friday

From a sermon preached at Lincoln’s Inn (1618)

[Man’s Misery]

First we contemplate man, as the receptacle, the ocean of all misery. Fire and air, water and earth, are not the elements of man; inward decay, and outward violence, bodily pain, and sorrow of heart may be rather styled his elements; And though he be destroyed by these, yet he consists of nothing but these. As the good qualities of all creatures are not for their own use, (for the sun sees not his  own glory, nor the rose smells not her own breath: but all their good is for man) so the ill conditions of the creature, are not directed upon themselves, (the toad poisons not itself, nor does the viper bite itself)  but all their ill pours down upon man. As though man could be a microcosm, a world in himself, no other way, except all the misery of the world fell upon him. Adam was able to decipher the nature of every creature in the name thereof, and the Holy Ghost hath deciphered his in his name too; In all those names that the Holy Ghost hath given man, he hath declared him miserable, for, Adam, (by which name God calls him, and Eve too) signifies but redness, but a blushing: and whether we consider their low materials, as it was but earth, or the redness of that earth, as they stained it with their own blood, and the blood of all their posterity, and as they drew another more precious blood, the blood of the Messias upon it, every way both may be Adam, both may blush. So God called that pair, our ifrst parents, amn in that root, Adam: But the first name, by which God called man in general, mankind, is Ish, Therefore shall a man leave his father, etc. [Gen. 2:24] And Ish, is but a sonitu, a rugitu [from a sound, from a cry]: Man hath his name from crying, and the occasion of crying, misery, testified in his entrance into the world, for he is born crying; and our very laws presume, that if he be alive, he will cry, and if he be not heard cry, conclude him to be born dead. And where man is called Gheber, (as he is often) which is derived from greatness, man is but great so, as that word signifies; It signifies a giant, an oppressor, great in power, and in a delight to do great mischiefs upon others, or great, as he is a great mark, and easily hit by others. But man hath a fourth name too in Scripture, Enosh, and that signifies nothing but misery. When David says, Put them in fear O Lord, that the nations may know they are but men [Ps. 9:20]; there’s that name Enosh, that they are but miserable things. Adam is blushing, Ish is lamenting, Geber is oppressing, Enosh is all that; but especially that, which is especially notified for  the misery in our text, Enosh is Homo aeger [a sick man], a man miserable, in particular by the misery of sickness, which our next step, Non sanitas, There is no soundness, no health in me…

 

 

 

 

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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NT Wright and Simply Christian

In advance, the following is a paper that I wrote reviewing a portion of NT Wright’s “Simply Christian”  for an ethics class for my second Master’s degree. It’s not a review of the full book, because our class was broken into groups and each member of the group covered different portions of the book. Thus, in the following, I’m looking at Chapters 8-10. You’ve been warned.

———

N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Christian, is a love filled attempt to provide a description of what Christianity is about being an explanation to Christians and commendation to non-Christians (ix).  Every page pours forth love.  There is no mistaking it: Wright is a faithful, wise, and sincere lover of Jesus Christ and he communicates Jesus’ love to others magnificently.  Last week, we covered the first four chapters that discuss the echoes of justice, the quest for spirituality, the desire for relationships, and the draw of beauty.  This week, the reading took us further into the Bible story.  Wright, in chapters 5-7, walks the reader through who God is and what His relation to  Heaven and Earth is (pantheism? Panenthies? Or Overlapping, Interlocking?); who Israel is and what they believed and hoped for; and, finally, Jesus and the coming of God’s kingdom.  In chapters 8-10, Wright covers a description of who Jesus was (and is), the Holy Spirit, and the effecting work of the Spirit in the life of the believer (living by the Spirit).  For the purposes of this paper, I will be focusing on chapter 8: “Jesus: Rescue and Renewal”.  There will first be a summary of the chapter, followed by a critique of Wright’s understanding of Jesus’ awareness of his divinity and what I believe to be a lack of discussion of God’s wrath and the Cross.

Wright begins by attempting to answer the question “why did Jesus’s followers hail him as Messiah?” especially since he didn’t act like the expected Messiah (106).  Jesus was not a military leader nor did he instigate any military uprisings (intentionally) (106).  There was no mention of rebuilding the Temple (106).  He spoke with knowledge and wisdom (like a prophet) and he did miraculous works; but, according to Wright, this is not enough to call him the Messiah (107).  The Messiah, it was believed in Jewish tradition, would be a Ruler, a mighty king like David, the one who would lead “the triumphant fight against Israel’s enemies” (Wright 107).  Jesus was none of these.  Rather, He suffered and died; and this, says Wright, His followers could never have understood, no matter how many times Jesus told them (107).

Jesus was a royal and suffering servant, as it was recorded in Isaiah.  “…it is in Isaiah…that we find …God’s coming kingdom, the renewal of creation expressed not least in remarkable healings, the power of God’s ‘word’ to save and restore, the ultimate victory over all the ‘Babylons’ of the world, and the figure of the Servant itself” (107-8).  What was not understood about the Messiah was that in order for evil to have its true end, the Messiah, the propitiation for sins, had to suffer the result of sin: death; and be resurrected to defeat it.  Wright phrases it this way, “God’s plan to rescue the world from evil would be put into effect by evil doing its worst to the Servant–that is, to Jesus himself–and thereby exhausting its power” (108).

Wright then turns his attention to Jesus and his relation to the Temple.  As we know from the bible, Jesus attacks the Temple (for example, turning over tables) with the intent to challenge “…in the name of Israel’s God, the very place where God was supposed to live and do business with his people….God would destroy the city and the Temple, and would vindicate not the Jewish nation as a whole, but Jesus himself and his followers” (109).  The enemy was not Rome, “but the powers of evil that stood behind human arrogance and violence, powers of evil with which Israel’s leaders had fatally colluded” (110).  The rescue was coming, “not from mere political enemies, but from evil itself, from the sin which had enslaved them.  His death would do what the Temple, with its sacrificial system, had pointed toward but had never actually accomplished” (110).  Jesus was the intersecting point of the in-breaking of the kingdom, turning what people considered truth on its head, just as he had done to the merchant tables in the temple.  He would be the unexpected royal and suffering Messiah (110).  Nothing could have prepared his followers for this: not anything from the history of paganism nor the “puzzling, shadowy prophecy” in the Old Testament (Wright 111).  Wright puts it excellently, “The death of Jesus of Nazareth as the king of the Jews, the bearer of Israel’s destiny, the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunderstanding the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns….Christianity is based on the belief that it was and is the latter” (111).

The next item on Wright’s agenda is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and, subsequently, the rise of Christianity.  He writes, “…we are talking here about resurrection, not resuscitation” (112).  He poses two theories that attempt to contradict the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.  The first is “cognitive dissonance”, which is, “the phenomenon whereby people who believe something strongly go on saying it all the more shrilly when faced with contrary evidence” (112).  Wright explains how this theory fails by using the example of self-proclaimed Messiah, Simeon ben Kosiba, who was killed by the Romans in AD 135 (ref. 106), “nobody went around afterward saying he really was the messiah after all, however much they had wanted to believe that he had been” (112).  The second is the argument that the concept of “resurrection”  was a common characteristic of religions in the ancient Near East.  “Dying and rising ‘gods,’ yes…But–even supposing Jesus’s very Jewish followers knew any traditions like those pagan ones–nobody in those religions ever supposed it actually happened to individual humans“ (113).  Wright, I think, comes to the correct conclusion about Jesus’ resurrection and the rise of the church, “…the best explanation…for the rise of Christianity is that Jesus really did reappear, not as a battered, bleeding survivor, not as a ghost…but as a living, bodily human being” (113).  A bodily resurrection it was; for had it not been (had it been “Ghost” like), Jesus’ well-read Jewish followers would have described his body as a shining star, the way the righteous appear at the resurrection in Daniel 12:3 (113).  Jesus’ interaction with Thomas (plus other examples) indicates that His body was real in His resurrection.

Believing the resurrection is not an easy thing to do, especially considering our post-modern, skeptic, science based worldview (Wright 114).  Believing, says Wright, requires a worldview switch.  “Sometimes, to make sense of the actual evidence before us, we have to pull our worldview, our sense of what’s possible, into a new shape.  That is the kind of thing demanded by the evidence about Easter” (114).  Believing in the resurrection is more than just the comforting thought of an afterlife, which, according to Wright, has been the significant “wrong turn” by Western Christendom (114).  Wright explains, “Resurrection isn’t a fancy way of saying ‘going to heaven when you die.’  It is not about ‘life after death’ as such.  Rather, it’s a way of talking about being bodily alive again after a period of being bodily dead.  Resurrection is a second-stage postmortem life: ‘life after ‘life after death’” (115).  In other words, since Jesus has been raised, God’s kingdom has been ushered in, “and that means we have a job to do.  The world must hear what the God of Israel, the creator God, has achieved through his Messiah” (114-5).  The resurrection is one more event of heaven and earth intersecting and interlocking (Wright 115).  By the resurrection of the Suffering God–one who really does know our pain and anguish–the world and humanity have been renewed and revived, lifted up and given new breath, with a commission to go and “make new creation happen in the world” (Wright 116).

The final portion of the chapter deals with Jesus divinity.  Jesus is, according to Wright, not merely an echo but the actual voice, “a voice which speaks of rescue from evil and death, and hence of new creation” (116).  Historically, Wright explains, those who followed Jesus “had never imagined that a Messiah would be divine” (116).  However, the early Christian Church adhered to Jewish monotheism while affirming that Jesus was divine; this occurred not many centuries later after much thought and contemplation, but within a single generation of the event of the Cross, resurrection, and ascension (Wright 117).

Though the early Church was aware of Jesus’ divinity, Wright explains that Jesus was not (118).  What Wright argues is “…not to diminish the full incarnation of Jesus but to explore its deepest dimension, is that Jesus was aware of a call, a vocation, to do and be what, according to the Scriptures, only Israel’s God gets to do and be.  That, I believe, is what it means to speak about Jesus being both truly divine and truly human(118).  Wright explains, “The closer we get to the cross, the clearer the answer we get to the question, Who did Jesus think he was?” (118).  The closer we get to the Cross the better we see Jesus as fulfilling what God wanted to do: return Israel to himself, to judge and to save, assuming authority over the Temple (Wright 118).  Did Jesus, who had this divine sense of vocation ever think he was mad?  Wright affirms, “certainly”; yet,

“Jesus was certainly shrewd enough to be aware of the possibility of delusion.  But …he was sustained not only by his reading of scripture, in which he found so clearly the lines of his own vocation, but also by his intimate prayer life with the one he called Abba, Father.  Somehow, Jesus both prayed to the Father and took upon himself a role which, in the ancient prophecies, was reserved for YHWH–that of rescuing Israel and the world.  He was obedient to the Father, simultaneously doing what only God can do” (118-9).

Wright closes by emphasizing that Jesus was not aware of his divinity as you and I are aware of our gender or the temperature outside (119).  Jesus’ awareness was closer to a deep awareness of a vocation; like I know I want to be a professor, Jesus had a deep knowledge, “a powerful and all-consuming belief…that within the very being of God there was a give-and-take, a to-and-fro, a love given and received.  Jesus seems to have believed that he, the fully human prophet from Nazareth, was one of those partners in love” (119).

Wait.  What?  What did he just say?

It’s not often I get to see an overlap between 1990’s British Teen-Pop with 2000’s British  Brilliance.  Recently, I was listening to the Spice Girls all time chart busting tune: “Wannabe” (don’t judge).  This song explains what it takes to be their “lover”: essentially, you have to be accepted by their friends.  But there’s more to the song.  The songwriters want to tell you what they really want, (really, really, really want).  But they don’t.  Essentially, they say, “I’m gonna tell you what I want and it’s “zigazig ha”.  Wait. What?  I don’t know what that even is.  I, the listener, am dragged along thinking I’m gonna know, finally, what they really want…yet I end up disappointed with nothing really explained.  I’m left with “zigazig ha”.

This is how I feel here, with N.T. Wright’s understanding of Jesus’ awareness of His divinity.  Wright seems to explain Jesus’ awareness of His divinity as an hyper-enlightened man who intuitively got his vocation right.  “Zigazig ha”.  While I appreciate Wright’s ability to play-up Jesus’ humanity, he simultaneously down-plays (in a significant way) Jesus’ divinity.  With the events of the Transfiguration and Jesus’ Baptism rattling around in my head, I cannot help but be confused by Wright’s language.  How could  Jesus’ experience, at His Baptism, when the dove floated down from heaven with God’s voice booming above, “This is my son.  My chosen one.  Listen to him” (Luke 9).  Or, certainly, if not at His baptism Jesus would have had an awareness (the real awareness) that he was divine (though also human) at the Transfiguration.  In addition, throughout Jesus’ ministry, he knew he had the power to forgive sins, which only God could do; and He said that if you’ve seen Him (Jesus) you’ve seen the Father.  Not to mention all the people recorded as referring to him as the Lord, as in God.  All of this indicates that at some level Jesus was aware of his divinity in more of an active way than just a deep knowledge of a vocation.  I feel that Wright has given his reader “zigazig ha”.

Yes, I am attempting to be comical (Wright’s writing is significantly better than the Spice Girls’); yet, I feel that what Wright has done at many penultimate moments within his book is drop his reader short of really understanding something truly beautiful, truly brilliant.  For instance, in chapter 8, there is virtually no discussion about Jesus being the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, the one upon whom God would fully unleash His wrath.  Wright correctly identifies Jesus as the Suffering Servant–suffering for the world because of sin; yet, he seems hesitant to make reference to God’s just wrath over sin and how Jesus is the perfect propitiation, the Judge judged in our place.  This is one of the primary points of the Cross:  we are the ones who failed, we are the ones who deserve God’s wrath, yet, through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross God’s wrath is fully mete out, fully satisfied, once and for all.  By faith in Jesus we are justified, pronounced “not guilty”, and able to stand in God’s presence (in Christ, not on our own); this is the message that I need to hear daily.  This is the message I long to hear in Wright’s book, but I don’t.

 

 

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Not Self-Righteous Pricks: In Defense of the Runner

My husband and I have a joke: when I get back from a long run, he asks, “So, how much more righteous are you than me because of your run?” And I laugh, “Honey, I was completely more righteous than you when I got up at 6 am!”    We laugh;  both being Law/Gospel theologians, we know righteousness is only imputed to us by Christ and faith in Him. Nonetheless, truth lingers in the joke: runners have a bad rap; we’re often viewed as self-righteous pricks.

Yes, I’m sure there’s been that runner somewhere who rightfully earned said title of self-righteous prick, but I’ve never met him…or her and I know a lot of runners. Unicorn! So, I’ve no choice but believe that most of us (maybe even all?) are mislabeled and radically misunderstood. We are just runners out running and rarely are we running and thinking, Man, I’m so damn awesome..too bad that sucker over there isn’t more like me.  I mean, seriously, I’ve never had that thought and those whom I know–who are also runners, even competitively so–don’t think that way either. We’re just running, minding our own business, our footsteps, and oncoming traffic. “Other People” and any comparison to said “other people”–in terms of awesomeness and righteousness–falls in to the very distant background, especially when we’re facing mile 3 of a 14 mile long run. Oh, Good Lord, do I really have 11 more?…i think I may die…let’s burn this candle!

Too many times I’ve either heard in casual conversation or read in blog-posts that all of us runners are out to achieve our righteousness, that we give head nods to each other as we pass each other because we both know what we are really doing out on the road at 6am. And the later part of that statement is true, we do know what we are out doing but it’s FAR FROM trying to run to achieve righteousness. Runners know how fleeting (like sand through your fingers fleeting) trying to hold on to a sense of righteousness from running is.  So, we’re not running toward righteousness; rather, what is more likely is that we’re running from our unrighteousness, from our failures, from our emotional and spiritual turmoil and pain. We’re running at all times of the day and in degrees varying from 0-95 because that small scope of time while we’re out running is a reprieve from the things that haunt us present, past, and future. The head nod to another runner at 6am is the head nod of camaraderie, camaraderie of brokenness.  You, too? Yeah, me too. 

More often than not, when I get to know another runner, there is something in their past that jump started the running, something bad, something painful, something that altered their lives in a radical way. For me, running blossomed as a way to deal with the pain and suffering from being sexually assaulted. When I initially tried to self-destruct, I was eventually turned toward running, and running gave me that break from my pain that I needed. As my foot hit the ground and pulled my body forward, I felt the strength of the body God gave me, a body that is good, that is loved and not horrible and only fit for abuse. In that moment where I defied gravity and both feet flew through the air, I was weightless and I was flying, not burdened and weighed down. For those few moments, through those  many movements of my body, I did feel God’s pleasure…not because I was running, but because everything else in my cacophonous head was silenced long enough for me to sense it and feel it. Many of us runners have stories: stories of pain, abandonment, sorrow, grief, and loss  (in all their varying forms), and the backbone of our addiction and love of running stems from the very respite from those stories and current ones by getting picked up and carried away…even if  for only 30 minutes.

Far from being self-righteous pricks, most of us runners (all of the runners I know) are compassionate people who understand on a visceral level the limitations and brokenness and failure of the human body and mind. Running is our lover, yet we are more than aware that she is a very fickle one.  Just a few days of not running and our mile times drop. Too many  miles too fast will cause our joints to remind us the next day that we’re all too human. We’ll train for a race and bomb it…damn. We lose toe nails and gain blisters, neither one deterring nor hindering our running…because we’re addicts, and we know it. We understand the importance of community; we carry each other with words of encouragement and cheers and celebration for a long run well done…ah, heck, even if it’s just 3 miles…Way to go!!  Plus, no one else fully gets a runner like another runner (insert head nod here), so we runners kind of need each other, that’s why we can be clique-ish and why we speak a language that seems foreign to so many others, and if we need to apologize for anything it’s probably that. So: we’re sorry. (But here’s a website to help you translate our running lingo; you’ve now been sufficiently informed.)

We also love you, our non-running friend. There’s very little if any judgment towards you for not running because we are–if we’re honest–saving all of our judgment for ourselves and our slack-ass mile times. And, at least for me, sometimes I envy you my non-running friend, because you don’t look crazy at 5 in the morning running with 18,000 blinking lights and bedecked in safety green reflective material like some sort of whacked out neon Christmas tree. You’re sleeping like any sane person should at 5 in the morning; but as a runner, I’m not that sane so sometimes I’m jealous of your slumber and sanity.

So now you know. Now you know that we’re not self-righteous pricks, but fellow broken human beings, taking one step at a time just like you…albeit sometimes our steps are just quicker and well lit.

 

 

 

 

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John Donne on Friday

The Cross

 

Since Christ embraced the Cross itself, dare I

His image, th’ image of his Cross deny?

Would I have profit by the sacrifice,

And dare the chosen altar to despise?

It bore all other sins, but is it fit

That it should bear the sin of scorning it?

Who from the picture would avert his eye,

How would he fly his pains, who there did die?

From me, no pulpit, nor misgrounded law,

Nor scandal taken, shall this Cross withdraw,

It shall not, for it cannot; for, the loss

Of this Cross, were to me another cross;

Better were worse, for, no affliction,

No cross is so extreme, as to have none.

Who can blot out the Cross, which th’ instrument

Of God, dewed on me in the Sacrament?

Who can deny me power, and liberty

To stretch mine arms, and mine own cross to be?

Swim, and at every stroke, thou art thy cross,

The mast and yard make one, where seas do toss.

Look down, thou spiest out crosses in small things;

Look up, thou seest birds raised on crossed wings;

All the globe’s frame, and sphere’s, is nothing else

But the meridians crossing parallels.

Material crosses then, good physic be,

And yet spiritual have chief dignity.

These for extracted chemic medicine serve,

And cure much better, and as well preserve;

Then are you your own physic, or need none,

When stilled, or purged by tribulation.

For when that Cross ungrudged, unto you sticks,

Then are you to yourself, a crucifix.

As perchance, carvers do not faces make,

But that away, which hid them there, do take:

Let crosses, so, take what hid Christ in thee,

And be his image, or not his, but he.

But, as oft alchemists do coiners prove,

So may a self-despising, get self-love.

And then as worst surfeits, of best meats be,

So is pride, issued from humility,

For, ’tis no child, but monster; therefore cross

Your joy in crosses, else, ’tis double loss,

And cross they senses, else, both they, and thou

Must perish soon, and to destruction bow.

For if the’eye seek good objects, and will take

No cross from bad, we cannot ‘scape a snake.

So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking, cross the rest,

Make them indifferent; call nothing best.

But most the eye needs crossing, that can roam,

And move; to th’ others th’ objects must come home.

And cross thy heart: for that in man alone

Points downwards, and hath palpitation.

Cross those dejections, when it downward tends,

And when it to forbidden heights pretends.

And as the brain through bony walls doth vent

By sutures, which a cross’s form present,

So when thy brain works, ere thou utter it,

Cross and correct concupiscence of wit.

Be covetous of crosses, let none fall.

Cross no man else, but cross thyself in all.

Then doth the Cross of Christ work fruitfully

Within our hearts, when we love harmlessly

That Cross’s pictures much, and with more care

That Cross’s children, which our crosses are.

 

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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A Window into the Past: Women, Greco-Roman Society, and the Pastorals (part VII : 1Timothy 2:9-15)

laurenlarkin's avatarLaurenRELarkin.com

I don’t know what I was thinking running this skimpy post; it’s like I was being lazy and quick. But, going back through this portion, I see that more needs to be said and  teased out to give you, the reader, a better understanding into why Paul is saying some of these things and the meaning behind what he’s saying. So, let me try writing this post again…

For information about the difference between the letters to persons and the letters to churches, click here; the intro to that post will provide you with information I should’ve provided here.

1 Tim. 2:8-15

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire,but with what is proper…

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