Dialogue with the Divine

This morning during my time of stillness and prayer I asked God to remove the nagging doubts of his existence and involvement from my mind. I said amen and then checked my email where I found this:


07/21/08
Explaining Away Light
Jill Carattini

Ballet lost some of its wonder when it was explained. It was a class that was supposed to lift my mind, lighten my spirit, and boost my grade point average. Instead it became a one-credit nightmare: a class dedicated to dissecting moves I could not duplicate, within a semester that seemed to slowly dismember my fascination with dance.

Explanations sometimes have a way of leaving us with a sense of loss. Students note this phenomenon regularly. Expounded principles of light refraction and water particles seem to explain away the rainbow, or at least some of its mystique. Air pressure, gravity, and the laws of physics deconstruct the optical mystery of the curve ball. Knowledge and experience can leave us with a sense of disappointment or disenchantment.

I recently read an article that scientifically explained the glow of a firefly. The author noted the nerves and chemical compounds that make the "fire" possible, pointing out that it is merely a signal used for mating and far from the many romantic myths that have long surrounded it. I put the article down with a sigh. And then a thought occurred to me in a manner not unlike the promise of Christ: The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.(1) Where nerves and photocytes seem to explain away the glow of the firefly, have we any more erased the miracle of light?

However accurate or inaccurate our explanations might be, they sometimes have a way of leading us to short-sided conclusions. They have also led us to outright incongruity. We have now tried with great effort to define humanity as an impersonal product of chance, an adult germ in a vast cosmic machine. We have brusquely described life as a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, only to claim this should not lead us to despair. We have declared our appetites the gods of a better religion, while insisting both God and religion to be an invention of the human psyche. We scoff at the notion of a savior who frees the captive or restores the fallen, while maintaining we live with every qualification for human dignity, distinction, and freedom. But are these even realistic applications of our own philosophies? Do the explanations warrant the conclusions?

On the contrary, we are undermining our own mines. In the words of R.C. Sproul, we are living on borrowed capital. Why should a product of chance have intrinsic value? Why would an impersonal, cosmic accident see herself as a personal, relational being worthy of dignity? What we are attempting to explain away in one sentence, we are arguing for in the next.

Explanations need not always lead us to the conclusion that all is lost. But neither should our explanations lead us to conclusions that contradict our own accounts! Thankfully, in both cases, there are times in life where we find, like Job, that we have spoken out of turn and discover there may be more to the story. After sitting through the whirlwind of God's 63 questions, Job exclaims: "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know" (Job 42:3).

The invitation is before us. "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and hidden things that you have not known" (Jeremiah 33:3). God’s presence can be overlooked, but it cannot be explained away; the effort is as futile as the attempt to explain away the miracle of light.

Jill Carattini is senior associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Black Holes

A black hole, in astronomy, is a celestial object of such extremely intense gravity that it attracts everything near it and prevents everything, including light, from escaping. This accurately describes the state of my emotions the past three months. Two months ago things in general went south...I mean really far south...like Antarctica and the North Face has yet to make a jacket containing enough down feathers to insulate a person from a situation this icy.
As anyone who is acquainted with me or has read this blog knows my wife and two boys and I moved to Tempe, AZ in January of this year. What you might not know is that we took someone with us. We met Bill (not his real name) in October of last year. Bill had been a youth minister for close to seven years and had recently parted ways with the church. We immediately took a liking to Bill because he had all the airs of someone who had been wounded by the machine that can be the church machine. Josalyne and I are so merciful when we see someone licking their wounds we dive tongue first into helping them. So we took Bill under our wing and not only helped him get and keep his job with us at Outback but we encouraged him to come to Arizona with us and start a new life. In retrospect it now seems like the wrong idea and we've been told as much by friends and family but at the time I felt like a giddy prospector blazing a trail for the land of gold and in my excitement wanted to share the wealth with someone down on their luck.
Our first month in AZ should have served as a giant billboard warning us to jettison Bill. We were assured by Bill before we ever even packed the first pair of underwear that he had secured employment and had saved enough to carry him until he received his first paycheck. But, after having to exhaust more of our savings on gas, food, and lodging than we had originally accounted for we arrived practically in the hole. We all needed to start working immediately. The very next day Bill turned down the position he had been offered because he had "a bad feeling about it". This led to over a month of what he called "looking for work" and what we called "sleeping until eleven and then goofing around online until mid-afternoon". We tried to be gracious and understanding but our first priority was to provide for our little boys and so after waking him up every morning and doing everything short of showering and dressing him I got him out of the house and on the job trail.
I have been told that I am long-winded and that if words were people my writing's would be China. In the interest of the reader I will work towards something more like Iceland even though there are enough details following Bill finally finding and starting his job I could easily populate one hundred pages. You're welcome.
We agreed before leaving that Bill would use our car with the caveat that he would handle the monthly payments and the insurance. We were told at the end of each of the three months we were there that those items had been handled and we believed and trusted that it was the truth. At the end of April I was at the coffee shop where I worked when Josalyne called me. She had herself just received a call. A friend and adversary at the bank called Jos to warn her that they were coming to repossess the car. Josalyne told them there must be some mistake because Bill had been making the payments. She called Bill and he assured her that he had made every payment on time and he would fax a copy of the checks over to our bank as proof. Josalyne called the bank back and told them what was going on. The whole time I was feeling a persistent and nagging doubt and so I confronted Bill. He admitted that he hadn't made the first payment.
From there things snowballed as we discovered item after item that Bill had lied about "handling". We should have known that he wasn't "handling" any bills when package after package after package from ebay started pouring in. Later conversations would reveal that Bill had chosen to buy baseball bats, tomahawks, wallets, pants, shirts, coats, posters, guitars (he already had five), and so on rather than honor any of his financial obligations. Its hard to describe how betrayed we felt. We included Bill in our dream for a fresh start, allowed him to use our much needed car, bought all of the groceries (and made dinner with them every night), kept the apartment clean, involved him in everything we did as a family and with our families when they came to visit, (I) confided in him intensely personal things, etc. etc. etc. We were gutted. As if stealing and leeching off of a struggling young family wasn't bad enough, after we extended to him a second chance he threw it in our faces. We gave him the green light to leave his friends house (where he'd been staying) and return to the apartment with the condition that he start paying us a little bit back at a time every Friday. Thursday night he was back and Friday night he was right back out. He refused to surrender even one out of the almost three thousand dollars that he owed us.
Every detail has been painful, tedious, awkward, and infuriating from the police having to get involved in the recovery of the car to Josalyne having to load all of our belongings onto a storage POD by herself to having to leave our jobs behind to receiving threats from Bills family (Bill convinced his family that we had done to him everything that he had done to us) to getting letters from the complex demanding that we come up with almost four grand to cover the mess Bill created to leaving behind a wonderful new life that had taken us five years to achieve.
Back in Georgia it was hard to know what to say to people. It was harder to muster the energy to keep retelling the story (which is why I am doing it here) when every retelling just rekindled our anger and pain. I kept apologizing to people for my complex range of emotions. I would say, "there's always someone worse off like a wife with five children who just lost her husband or orphans rummaging through garbage in Guatamala". But its all relative isn't it? I mean, if I was that wife or that child would it be wrong of me to say, "this sucks"? I don't think so and this situation that we are still climbing out of on hands and knees definitely does suck. Its impossible to leave the emotional element out of the equation. It would be like explaining how rain works (and I have a three year old so believe me, that's like a daily thing) but leaving the water part out of it.
Bill wiped us out financially and wounded us to the point where it will be a task to trust anyone like that again. This situation has left us questioning God and wondering what the next step might be. Our cars are still in Arizona and we don't have to money to go and get them. All of our belongings are in a storage POD in Arizona and we don't have a place to put them. We are borrowing a car so Jos can work at Outback and I am caring for my mentally retarded brother and the boys full time. My mom and step-dad have been very gracious in letting us live in their basement in exchange for his care but at some point we have to move on. Right now we just don't know which direction to move and it sucks.

Why we love our church

This is why we love our church. I hope all is well with all our friends and family back in GA. I will be blogging more in the near future. In the meantime there is this... http://www.azcentral.com/community/tempe/articles/0322Praxis.html

Oh Happy Day!!!

Ok, so I am a little late arriving to the party here but I just found out that you can upload videos to your blog. And there was much rejoicing....Anyway, I will be posting my sermon here soon but in the meantime here are my boys doing what they love doing the most. Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Moving Trucks and Misletoe

I am leaving and I am leaving soon. Two weeks from this Sunday to be precise. Months of planning, fretting, praying, arguing, resolving, saving, spending, hoping, regretting, listening, discussing, fearing, and anticipating have culminated in what will be a four day trek from my present home in Cumming, GA to my future home in Glendale (a Phoenician Suburb), AZ. Josalyne and I will be piloting a Toyota Sienna with close to 200,000 miles on it and a Budget rent-a-truck with our PT Cruiser in tow. My sister Jessica will be riding shotgun for the Atlanta to Dallas stretch of the journey and then Jos and I are on our own for a thousand plus miles of desert, dust storms, and desolation. Fortunately for all involved my mother has generously offered to escort the boys by plane to Phoenix where she will rendezvous with Josalyne and I when we arrive. The details and logistics of a move of this size read like the grocery list for Brookhaven Obesity Clinic and while daunting and largely consuming the Devil is not in the details he’s in the distance. Emotions covering the spectrum from utter elation from the possibilities and utter dread from the possibilities and everything in-between have rubbed and pressed and hewn a canyon grand in the hearts of all involved. The mind needs answers and answers exist but there is no presentation of logic or arrangement of specifications comprehensive or expansive enough to put the heart at ease or answer the one big question it constantly asks: will we survive this? It is only natural to wonder such a thing at a time like this. Will our relationship suffer under the strain of each others absence? Will we talk as much, laugh as much, cry as much, share as much with 3,000 miles between us? Will friends overcome the strong pull of laziness when communication of the electronic or telephonic sort is necessary and can or should a friendship endure under those conditions? Will grandchildren love and long for grandparents and grandparents for grandchildren and sisters for brothers and brothers for sisters and children for parents and parents for children? Will the expediency of new friendships alter or eliminate the harder bought old ones? Will I change? Will my family change? Will I succeed or am I leading my family down another road that starts in flowered meadows and ends in rotted swamplands? Can I follow through on my commitment to this path and see it through to completion no matter the difficulty? Am I mature enough in my journey with Christ to discern His voice from my own? Am I making enough time for silence so I can listen intently for the whisper of the Holy Spirit and in the noise of leaving would I hear him telling me to stay? These questions nag like an excited child in line to see Santa Claus and demand answers that are not easily or possibly given at this time. I have prayed that God would send an angel to visit me and that this angel would bestow upon me a gift which I would use to infuse the hearts of those around me with peace and joy and confidence but at the time of writing this I have yet to hear the flapping of gigantic wings. I’ll keep you posted on that one. The hard truth here is that I cannot, nor can anyone but God, grant that peace. Harder still is the reality that the more I try to force it on people the less peace anyone actually feels and the more I sense that I am a child with a stick attempting to knock the honey out of the hive despite the stinging evidence that its not working. All of this further crystallizes in my mind the one thing Christ keeps patiently reminding me of every time he has to pick me up and dust me off; that I am free to make my own choices as was His design but choices made without His consultation or guidance will end unhappily. And so in the din of noise that is the crescendo of my life in GA in its last days is it more important than ever that I seek the silence of hot dark tea without sugar or milk and sunrises and 100 million frozen diamonds on icy lawns or car hoods under flannel blankets while arguing in whispers with my wife about whether that was a satellite or shooting star or long drives to work with the Christmas music turned off (they’re probably playing the Christmas Shoes again anyway) or avoiding the malls or keeping my mouth closed when my friends mouths and hearts are open or stealing ten minutes from my schedule to lay on the carpet and be a jungle gym for my one and three year old boys or standing in the corner at work at marveling at the beauty and sweet nature of my wife as she resolves problems or any other moment that I can, but usually do not, choose to invest like currency into my relationship with God and everyone He has placed or allowed to be in the realm of my knowing. In every single one of those moments may I seek the face and listen intently for the voice of the one who strung miles of nerves and vessels under pliable muscle and engineered a mind that longs for knowledge and a heart that aches to love and be loved and was the architect behind a body that aches with age but remains viable, mobile, and without disease. If I succeed at what I am endeavoring to accomplish over the next two years may my prayer ever be to remain keenly aware that he is there loving and prompting and leading and saving me every waking and sleeping second of my life and for that my I burn with a humble gratitude. If I fail then may I pray the prayer penned lavishly upon a simple lacquered piece of wood placed silently in my room by my mother shortly after my father died, “Where with intention I have erred I have but one plea that God is good and goodness still delighteth to forgive”. As you head home to gather with your families and friends around trees, and fires, and presents, and food this Christmas I pray that you will go with God and please pray that I will remember that He will go with me. Have a very Merry Christmas and as the sun rises on a new year may the light of Christ glow brighter within your hearts.

February 19, 2004 - for josalyne

o. what must I do to assuage your multiplying fears?
what mystic serum should I apply to your trembling heart
to reverse the relentless encroachment of the infection of doubt...
to undo its effect upon you and me and us?

shall I lay my body coursing with the hot blood of purest love
upon the cold slab of sacrifice
and place a shining blade in your soft hand
to prove through my giving what I have to affixed to words innumerable?

shall I adhere my dry cracked lips to your red and swollen ones
and allow the moisture within our burning mouths
to conduct the electricity of longing?

what water have you in that vast and tormented ocean of a mind
that would suffice to bring the inferno of my passion for you
to a benign and smoldering heap of wet ashes?

o, what must I do to assuage your multiplying fears?
I implore you to yield to my advances,
to collapse in my embrace,
to lean out, eyes close tightly, over the chasm of not knowing
and feel the thick air for my steadying hand

place your interests and concerns upon my shoulders
and trust...ever trust...that I will willingly bear up underneath

February 19, 2004 - dream

my dreams like wild islands
dotted the watery landscape of my sleep
intermittent as a snow storm
in a Georgia winter

the topography and inhabitants
as differing as men's and women's
understanding of the word 'love'

college professors and classrooms
lovers long forgotten and citties unknown
and my father and house from my childhood