RETROSPECTIVE LEARNING

 [Any of you who were present recently at one of my speaking engagements will find these words familiar.  The next two blogs will be loose excerpts from the talks I have recently given in Belton and Center. I thought a couple of my points were blogworthy. Thanks for your patience and loyalty to keep showing up expecting something worthy of your time!]

“Get skillful and godly Wisdom, get understanding (discernment, comprehension, and interpretation); do not forget and do not turn back from the words of my mouth.”  Proverbs 4:5 (Amplified Bible)

Lately I have come to see some added dimensions to this scripture.  The ways we get understanding and discernment are not limited to reading other’s books, listening to other  people’s lessons or sermons, or even reading the Bible. Sometimes God, the Master Teacher, reaches us through our own memories. Come with me on a little journey as I describe some lessons God is teaching me as I work as an author.

I think I used to believe that learning happens first, and then the writing happens as a means of teaching or at least imparting what we have already learned.  (Now, translate “learning” loosely, please, because you and I both know that true learning doesn’t happen the first time a fact settles upon our brains uncontested.)  But after laboring for years with high school freshmen who swore to me that they had nothing whatsoever worth writing about in an essay, I came upon an exciting and inspiring quote by the celebrated author, E. M. Forster.  He quite enigmatically probed, “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?”  At the time, I thought it was a catchy quote and true in an oblique sort of way.  But now, after having completed the writing of my first novel (a novella, really), I really do know what he was talking about!  He wasn’t quipping or being cute at all; he we was commenting upon the same phenomenon that happened to me as I wrote Out of the Chute in Azalea Heights ( amazon.com- paperback and Kindle).

When the first time we ever latch onto a truth is when we see it roll out of our pen or onto the computer in front of us, it is indeed a strange phenomenon. It is so strange, in fact, that I must attribute it to the supernatural Spirit of God at work to afford in us something I can only call retrospective learning.

As I stamped those fifty-year-old images onto solid paper— images of my daddy’s fascination with the Cold War and the Birdman of Alcatraz; visual images of the Center, Texas Dairy Queen and the Rio Theater;  and, sharp, audible recollections of Brenda Lee and Johnny Horton (“I’m Sorry” and “North to Alaska”); memories of mysterious hidden staircases in the Shelby County Courthouse—I fell into a meatier experience than I ever could have dreamed.

What I believed would be nostalgic meandering began to evolve into more profound discovery.

*        In chronicling a simple concrete confession about a clandestine midnight moped adventure, I gleaned the weighty abstraction that it almost always takes longer than we thought it would for mental realization to make its trip down into the realm of physical actualization.

*     What I meant to be a light entertaining tale about a wild-eyed hater of ruffles and petticoats turned into a stark realization about something Jesus said.  Jesus said that the eye is the lamp of the body; if the eyes are bad, the darkness is terrible.  This means that much can be gained or lost simply by the way we see things…and much of how we see things is our choice.

*         I just meant to take my readers on a vicarious jaunt down a homemade zip line from the top of a pine tree, but on my journey down I sensed a loud philosophical voice proclaiming, “It behooves us to straighten the tender sapling before it grows into a crooked tree.”

*       While making a graphic confession of a short but shameful profession as a 10-year-old fountain-pen thief, I found this pointed lesson rising up to intercept the superficial narration I really intended: Never underestimate the dangers of visionary children who are hell-bent against monotony and safety.  Never challenge the old adage about idleness being the devil’s workshop.  No truer words were ever spoken!

*      Nor should we ever underestimate God’s fervent desire and creative ability to redeem His perdition-bound children, regardless of the children’s ages- whether 10 or 90-in amazing ways!  The Almighty finds a way even when all the natural resources are shaky or depleted.

IN ALL YOUR WAYS

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.” – Proverbs 3:5-6

Recently our minister, Joe Keyes, reminded our congregation about some important lessons he had recently picked up from Andy Stanley, who wrote a book entitled, The Principle of the Path.  Now, I know Joe well enough to know that he did not just now learn these lessons but has likelier just recently been reminded of them via a new viewpoint, another’s lenses.  (And that in itself is a lesson worth writing about: it behooves us to keep studying the Word through other’s vantage points—even parts of the Word, like this one, that a practical, fleshly part of ourselves wants to talk us into thinking we know inside out, backwards and forwards, so what’s the use in sowing into tired soil whose nutrients are long depleted? Another time.  Not today.)

He says, “Direction, not intention, determines our destination.”  Yes, exactly!  I remember as an English teacher who made her kids write in journals every Monday posting this quote on the board for twenty minutes’ worth of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old contemplation:  “If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?”  

The key to reaching a particular destination is to stick closely to the map.  A lack of commitment to the map, a laissez faire attitude toward one’s map is the best way to waste a lot of expensive gasoline.  A successful road trip to someplace we have never been requires that we trust our map or GPS and then back up that faith with strict adherence to its recommendations.  Anything less is foolhardy.

The key to showing up where we want to arrive in the Kingdom, both here and in the life to come, is utter, total submission to the One Authority.  Once we have identified the True Authority, we can no longer dilly-dally around with inferior would-be substitutes; we have to ignore all competition with the Authority.  Sometimes, at least with me, that is easier said than done.   Sometimes I am not successful at just passively ignoring the other  voices by angling my head a little so that my earballs are out of the direct line of fire; I have to actively do battle with the competition.  I have to speak the Truth out loud or stamp its imprint solidly and concretely upon paper.  Sometimes God has even arranged it so that someone else appears before me who needs to hear the very Truth I need to remember right then.  I am obliged then to open my mouth and speak it for the sake of us both.  Now you may think this is hypocrisy, but I heartily disagree because when I hear myself say it, or when I see myself write it, I am suddenly convicted of this Truth and realize that I have been in a fuzzy state about it until just now.  Oftentimes with me it is just as E.M. Forster said:  “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?”  

I wonder if because I have such a sixty years worth of tendency to speak impulsively and to say way too many words, God just arranged a way to teach me as all that is happening.  He might have thought, “Huh— if she is going to persist in being this way, I’ll find a way to meet her where she is.  I’ll just hijack her words on the way out of her mouth and on the way out of her fingers so that by the time they hit the air or the paper, she gets what I have been trying to get her to see all this time! She will think, ‘I think that? I never had a clue!’”

“Trust”— Lean only on Him for true understanding.  Don’t let the world interpret your Truth.

“All— Not just in some, but in all of your ways—Sunday ways through Saturday night ways; alone times and social times— acknowledge His authority.

…and He will make the best path known to us.  Solomon started well, but somewhere along the way, his “trust” became wobbly and his “all” became “some.”  A few hundred foreign wives in order to kowtow to political correctness, and bam!  He was somewhere he never intended to be.  He had leaned upon something other than God. Read Ecclesiastes to hear and feel his regret. Read 1 Kings 11 to see the far-reaching disaster to Israel’s moral fiber because of her once wise, but finally misguided, king.

I once heard somebody say that it is true that experience probably really is the best teacher, but it’s just plain stupid, with all the roadkill along the highways, to insist upon walking in front of an eighteen-wheeler.  Let us try to learn from Solomon’s experience.

OOPS!

Dear Friends,
This is just a note of apology.  I have heard that some of you received yesterday's post twice-- once last week and then again yesterday.  Yesterday when I was checking on something from my blog site, the post I thought I sent last week was marked only as having been written in draft form rather than actually being published, so I published it.  However, Larry said he DID already receive it last week.  I really don't know what's going on, but I'm sorry if I wasted your time yesterday by sending you an old, stale post. 

Thanks to all of you for your faithful following.

Love,
Jan

WAITING- A WOULD-BE POEM

For years a poem has been residing restlessly on the tip of my tongue.  Now, that is an odd thing for one like me, whose tongue has trouble holding onto anything that gets near it!  But for some reason, this poem, unlike hundreds of others that have spewed out ink all over white pages, just stays there in progress, unformed and waiting.  I don’t believe it is that I am not ready to say the thing or that the thing I want to say is not clearly established in my mind.  It just has never jelled into poetry yet.  It has occurred to me recently that this is no excuse for not saying it.  So here is the poem, in less than poetic delivery, that has been sitting on my back burner for so long.

Lord, we are all just waiting.  We act like we are busy with important things down here, but what we are really the busiest with is the waiting.  We want you to come back.  I know you expect us to be about the business of getting others ready for you, and I sure hope I am doing that.  I pray every morning to be vigilant about my opportunities for the day ahead, to be ready for “Yes” when the question comes up, and to resist “No” when I get goal-oriented about my own agenda.  But, God, honestly, so much of the time, I notice that what I am really doing is throwing myself into diversions, casting my energy toward some kind of distraction to make me not sigh that You’re still not back. 

Here we are down here planning meals, doing the laundry, doing spring cleaning, organizing our desk drawers.  We are going learning to use our new cameras, building tree houses, taking hikes, playing golf and bridge, and vacuuming our floors.  We are moving out of old houses into new ones, and buying new cars, and looking for the right college.  We are crocheting afghans and subscribing to magazines, learning to make perfect piecrust, and teaching our grandchildren to pitch washers and catch fish.  We plan, we go, we do… but mostly, we know that we are waiting.  We look upon the world you have left us in and glean its treasures and exult in its pleasures, but we yawn at night when we climb into bed knowing that it was a  fragment of only relative finery, a titillating diversion, a consolation prize while we wait for Life to begin.

Oh, it’s not that we don’t enjoy ourselves, Lord, and I certainly don’t mean to sound ungrateful for brown eggs discovered under red chickens and a largemouth bass wriggling and tugging but losing the battle on the end of my line. None of that elegance is lost on me.  All the ways you have given me to be re-created are utterly delightful in light of the frame of fallen-ness that seeks to swallow me whole.   The Prince of this World, the Enemy, prowls these parts, no matter where we find ourselves on this fragile orb. So, that we have such pleasures as reading a good book and listening to rapturous music, touching babies’ faces, and smelling paperwhites that make surprise visits out of the bleak, cold January brownness is no insignificant offering.  We accept them with humble gratitude and stuff our pockets full of them for rainy days ahead.

But all the while, we are really just finding something to do, some way to get by, ways to forget we are still on this side until You show up and we get to go Home. 

Am I doing it wrong?  Did You want me to put this down in some concrete, tangible form so that I would see something wrong in my viewpoint?  If I were really being used up for the right purposes, would I be less than eager for Your return, knowing every night when I finally lie down for a few hours, that there is still so much yet to be done?

 Instead of a would-be poem from me to You, is this really a letter from You to me?  Could the reason that I have never written the poem be that I am ashamed?

GRACE BEYOND SMOOTH EDGES

Whether we ask for them or not, the gifts keep coming, and whether we recognize it or not, yes, they really are gifts.  We talk about grace, we go on about God’s goodness, we mouth the words from Romans 8:28 and Ephesians 1:11, and then something happens that makes us gasp and squint our eyes and try to focus in on these things we have always called true. We wonder for a minute if this might be the day, if this moment holding memories of this event, might be the turning point of our thinking this way, these benevolent assessments of God and his grace.  Did we think it would go on like that forever— day after lovely, blissful day of the easy gifts to call grace?  Was I expecting this— for “Give thanks in all circumstances” to look more like counsel to everybody else than to me in these circumstances?   Is this one thing, or this string of one thing after another hitting so close to home, really the monkey wrench that has finally been thrown into the ageless works that will cause every thinking person to do a double take on the scriptures about grace and God’s sovereignty and goodness?  From now on, because of what is happening in my world, will the truth of all matters be changed from “God is always with us working for good in everything” to “God is sometimes good and has been known randomly to distribute good gifts we call grace. Chin up; this could be your lucky day!”?

            We don’t want to think these things, much less come out and say them, to ask these raw questions, so we learn not to squint our eyes and take pause when “bad” happens to us and those we love.   Instead we shake our heads in dismay and go on figuring God must somehow know what He’s doing or allowing to be done. We have no other choice but this God we have always known and given thanks to when all was “good,” so, really, what sense is there in considering going down some kind of new path now, especially when I am sixty years old, for heaven’s sake.  We deem ourselves too ignorant to figure God out, and so in a kind of ignorance-is-bliss-security blanket, we purposely further blur the glass through which we already see so darkly.

            I don’t want to sound too authoritative about anything so mysterious as God’s designs; I don’t mean to be glib about such profound questions.  I don’t wish to hurl cynical overtones onto the way most of us who want to be faithful to death have learned to get through hardship and even disaster.  I have really just been trying to get your attention.  I want to offer a word of encouragement, a reminder about the baby we might have allowed to be blurred into the bath water that needs to be thrown out.  Let’s rescue the Baby one more time. 

            Here are some things I have been reminded about lately as I have read a little book given to me by my friend, Ellen.  Have you read it?  Scores of people are right now. It is One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voscamp. (My first sentence refers to the gifts that keep coming whether we ask for them or not.  This was one of those.  Although I expressly asked Ellen not to give me a Christmas present, she did it anyway.  God told her to, and I am glad that she listened to Him!)

            I knew it—you know it, too— but we keep losing hold of it. This concept of grace is a slippery critter that the serpent slithers up to, winds around, and slides out of our grasp. Doesn’t what happens to me happen to you, too, when someone says after a prayer is answered “right,”  “God is so good!”?  Doesn’t that make you wonder, even if you don’t rudely blurt it out to the person who is so thrilled with God right then, “Does that mean that He wouldn’t have been good if He had answered in another, less thrilling, way?” This has nothing to do with whether He hears our prayers or whether our prayers have the ability to change His mind; this has to do with whether we consider Him to be good all the time or just some of the time.  This has to do with how we see grace and what we think it is and is not.

            Ann Voscamp writes in a compelling way that, at least for me, retards my reading speed considerably. It is conversational, yes, but it is more “mindversational.”  We are being allowed to read the way her mind talks to her before the words make their way up through her vocal chords or past the editor that monitors her fingers before they strike the keyboard.  She bypasses all that and lets us hear how it all first struck her.  I like it and I don’t.  I am impressed and exasperated.  I like to do almost everything fast, and this I can’t.  If I did, I would not only miss her artistry; I would lay waste to her deepest message. I am not here to give you a précis; I want you to read it!

            She starts out by trying to tell us about her experience of listing in a journal one thousand blessings.  She soon learns that this is a minute number to have chosen, for everywhere she looks there is another one, from brown farm eggs to “stepping over a dog when coming in from the dark.”  (I am reading only snippets of this at a time, so as I  walk away into my workday, my mind  picks them out: blessings I would write down if I took a mind to.  What I realized about myself— I wonder what you will realize about yours— is that most of what I call blessings is what I also call beauty.  A large definition of beauty, to be sure, that isn’t captured just by the eyes, but still what my mind settles on as “beauty.” Hmm.  I wonder why that is.  )

            But then what is she to do with the times when the cogs gets gunked up with a son whose hand is nearly lopped off by a fan blade and requires surgery, or memories that won’t stay abed about her little sister being killed in the driveway and her mother suffering its aftershock in an asylum?  What can she do about her list in light of these?  I don’t even know if this means that we cannot consider that there are easy circumstances and hard ones, happy times and sad ones, and even, on a small scale, victories and defeats, gains and losses.  I just know that the question she finally must ask herself about grace is valid, at least to my way of thinking:  

“What is good?  What counts as grace? What is the heart of God?  ...Do I believe in a God who rouses Himself just now and then to spill a bit of benevolence on hemorrhaging humanity?  A God who breaks through the carapace of this orb only now and then, surprises us with a spared hand, a reprieve from sickness, a good job and a nice house in the burbs— and then finds Himself again too impotent to deal with all I see as suffering and evil?  A God of sporadic, random, splattering goodness— and now and then splatters across a gratitude journal?  Somebody tell me:

                What are all the other moments?”

Then she reminds me— and you, too maybe? — about how if we are taking All of It seriously that we have always said we do, mustn’t we ask a different question? 

I am awake again to see another day.  I slept through another night.  I have children who love me, a companionable husband and grandchildren to enjoy and delight over again today, just like yesterday.  Why?  How come I get to do it again and again again (no that is not a typo)?

  She asks, “What if that which feels like trouble, gravel in the mouth, is only that—feeling?”

What if it’s only us misinterpreting?  If I weren’t so indignantly opposed to bandwagons and triteness, here I’d spout the cliché about God’s tapestry and both of its sides, but try to picture something newer and fresher than that which says the same thing.  Cliché or not, could it be the truth?  Are we just spoiled?  Have we come to expect so much more-- maybe not really "more", but different--than we should have about this life? In fact, is our "more" really less?  Are we losing in all that this life tells us we should be trying to gain? Is life in Christ really only, and no more than, what our American upbringing has taught us about the sweet life?

           

CHRISTMAS APPLES

Dear Blog-Friends,

Before this Christmasy post, I just wanted to give you a little update.  BROKEN JAR is in the process of being republished at this time and should be ready for distribution within a few weeks.  It was important for me to do this because I have been unhappy with the many errors I overlooked in its first printing.  Also, it will soon be available on e-books for your Kindle and the like.

Also, I am finally publishing OUT OF THE CHUTE IN AZALEA HEIGHTS!  This is my little novella based on my year as a fifth-grade hoodlum in Center, Texas, back in 1961. Some of you have been waiting a long time for me to take this step.  I am to be the local author guest speaker at a luncheon in February for the Belton Friends of the Library, so I was prompted to quit dragging my feet, get out of the miry clay, and on the stick about this thing. Also, I have a tentative invitation from Martha Rushing to come speak again to the Reading Club in Center on March 15.  I am quite excited about these opportunities.  OUT OF THE CHUTE... will also be available on e-books from Amazon. I hope that those of you who have been encouraging me for so long will not be disappointed with the result.

Merry Christmas to all of you who keep checking to see if this inconsistent, fickle blogger-of-sorts has finally posted something.  She appreciates you greatly!  

Now, for something a little more inspiring...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Then they opened their treasures and presented Him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.”  Matthew 2:11

                I’ve always thought the greatest gift is words. You can quit eating macaroni and cheese four times a week in order to save for an extravagant something for everyone on your list.  I really do believe in extravagant giving, but I know that the things bought with the big dollar often fail to afford the desired heart-result without first having established what we’re trying to say in giving them.

                Proverbs 25:11 says, “A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.”  If words are the deepest, most definitive messengers, this Proverb provokes some pretty deep thought:  Someone might argue that if words are so foundational, why do writers strive for the perfect metaphor to turn the abstract into the concrete, the words into pictures?  Why do they take a bland statement of fact and embellish it with imagery until it, like a caterpillar to a butterfly, is transformed into a poetic work of art?  Good points, but finish the thought.  When a student of the poem discovers the pictures, the teacher then asks him to communicate his discoveries in words.  When the beloved reads the sonnet, her mind takes the pictures and translates them back into words of her own:  “How thrilling that he loves me this much!”— which was the author’s truest and most basic motivation for writing the sonnet.  He has succeeded in communicating the feelings in his heart via word pictures to his beloved.  He didn’t really want to give her the ocean’s constancy or the rose’s fragrance; they were just the means to an end, a way to communicate the eternal and delightful aspects of his love so that she could get it and say, “How thrilling that he loves me this much!”

                The goods we find inside the festively decorated boxes at Christmas were carefully chosen and paid for at the behest of some sentiment inside the buyer’s heart that took her through the stores searching, finding, touching, inspecting, cocking her head in a visionary way to find out if it would send the right message. What we pull out of the packages and stockings at Christmas are no more and no less than tangible messages, reminders when seen, touched, smelled, worn, driven, or eaten, of someone’s love, esteem, or appreciation for us.  This is why we say, usually a little too casually and more, I fear, as a cliché than a conviction, “It’s the thought that counts.”

                So, okay, even more basic than the words are the thoughts, the feelings.  Yes, they are the real bottom line, but since none of us can read minds, God gave us a means of communicating them to others: words—“words aptly spoken.”

From Broken Jar:365 Days on the Potter's Wheel, Jan Doke

A CORNUCOPIA OF THANKS

Today there is reason for all of us to give thanks.  Some, fully able to identify right now with these traditional blessings, might prefer the first poem,  Others will find yourselves encountering a different kind of Thanksgiving this year, blessed, oh yes, for sure, but with a different feel--one more sober with both feet planted on the ground though your eyes are still cast upward.  Whatever your Thanksgiving is like this year, whatever your feelings are tempting you to accept as truth,  I pray you and all those you love will know the presence of your Father, your Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides. 

“Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.   For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.”  Psalm 100:4-5

“Thank you for the world so sweet.

Thank you for the food we eat.

Thank you for the birds that sing;

Thank you, God, for everything.”

For budding life—both petal and skin—

And the courage it gives me to hope again;

The oranges and yellows of Your autumnal world,

And the pink in the cheeks of our new baby girl.

For her days ahead full of trouble but grace

That will give her the strong feet to win the long race.

For a husband who lays down his life in your care,

And forgives me unendingly and goes on from there;

For my children whose faces go with me each day,

Growing older and wiser but still loving to play—

Sons and daughters as they’ve always been,

But now brothers and sisters who’ve become my friends.

For hearts who cherish my history,

And whose knees bend in prayer for me stubbornly;

For their eyes that are tender and hearts that are strong;

Tongues that will lovingly tell me I’m wrong.

For arms that enfold me and kiss away tears;

For the blood of your son that shatters my fears;

For brown earth that blossoms beneath yellow sun;

For a spirit that sings and feet that can run;

A mind that remembers and heart that can see

Such visions in detail of all that can be.

For bright hope and warm comfort that always abounds

When I fall disheartened with my face to the ground.

You remind me of all of the times in the past

When the bleakness I feared had won didn’t last.

So for seasons that change, for the thrill of surprise,

For Your Son who came near to reveal Satan’s lies,

For You packed in everything above and below,

What can I say?  How can I show

My thanks for this cornucopia so sweet

Sent down with your blessing and laid at my feet?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

 

“After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

              ‘Do not be afraid, Abram.

              I am your shield,

             Your very great reward.’” Genesis 15:1

Oh, Lord, in this season of fruitless requests

When I’m called just to trust you to do what is best,

With heavier feet I come; still I come—

Not with bountiful faith, but at least with some.

Pale and muted I sit, but at least I just sit

And not rush around madly trying to make pieces fit.

I know you are wishing I’d just leave this alone

In your hands while I count all the blessings I own.

Oh, please see I keep trying, but I’m crippled, it seems—

Haunted by losses and fractured dreams.

Please move me along from this waiting place

To your higher ground of selfless grace

Where my own minor bruises fade from my view,

And I bow in thanksgiving for the Blessing of You.

You said just to “stand” when we’ve done all we know,

So I’ll stand here in your armor until you say “Go,”

Praying that the mind of Christ will move in

So at last I might lose, and you finally might win.

Maybe this Thanksgiving feels different from the other years.  Perhaps the blessing you feel you need most continues and continues and continues some more to hide elusively.  If the blessings you are counting seem still not to overcome the weight of the pain and disappointment, push that list aside and focus fully on the one greatest Blessing—your “shield and your very great reward.”  Remember, Dear One, that when we can manage to stay put before God, when we can manage to remain standing even though we can’t make much forward progress, we are at just the right place to take the rare opportunity to bless God for being the Everlasting Arms when all others fail, the Mighty Shield when every other defense has fallen.  In our dearth we find a different kind of cornucopia; in our penury, a new way to give thanks. 

From Broken Jar: 365 Days on the Potter's Wheel, Jan Doke, 2009