Dog Mysticism

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Mark

Recently Teckla and I were visiting our friends Daniel and Carroll in Olathe. As we were sitting and talking in their living room, one of their dogs (Bella) jumped up on Daniel’s lap and pressed herself hard against his face. Daniel said Bella does this maybe twice a day.
This made me think of our dog at home. When Mira (a Doberman pinscher) is especially glad to see me, she pushes her nose hard between my knees as I scratch behind her ears. She nuzzles long and hard, wagging her stub of a tail the whole time.

I love this because she seems to be immersing herself in my presence—delighting in me and for the moment wanting nothing more. At other times she will press in: right before feeding times, when she needs to be let out—or if she notices we are eating something. She whines and thumps us with her head. In short, she begs and demands.

It may be a sign of my spiritual poverty, but I find Mira’s and Bella’s nuzzling instructive. In fact, it brings to mind some passages from the mystical 14th century classic The Cloud of Unknowing that urge believers to seek a direct experience of God: “What are you looking for, what do you want? To all of them you must reply, “God alone I seek and desire, only him.” (Ch. 7)

Like Mira I too thump God with all my supplications and requests—sometimes I beg and whine. Honestly, most of these prayers are not about me, but rather those I love. Nonetheless, as I contemplate how I delight in Mira’s nuzzling, I realize how much God must delight in us pressing in and delighting ourselves in his presence—his “thereness”—maybe even the fragrance of Christ.

I’m not sure God scratches us behind the ears as we nuzzle Him, but his delight in us is real.

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Net-Stupid

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Mark

A couple of weeks ago a BLM wildlife biologist explained to me that the bats of eastern Oregon were easier to catch than ones on the west side of the Cascades. He said this was because the bats in the east were “net-stupid”. Here along the coast, he said, it was harder to catch bats in the nets he set up. In the east the bats fly right into them.

He shared a lot of other fascinating stuff about different kinds of echolocation, fast-flying and slow-flying species of myotis, but my mind was chasing a squirrel. I was thinking about how I didn’t want my sons to be net-stupid, about nets I’d flown into, and about the father in Proverbs telling his son how not be net-stupid.

In the first chapters of Proverbs, Solomon warns his son of several kinds of nets. He spends a lot of time warning against the traps laid out by the adulteress. Today this net probably includes all the porn on one of the largest nets—the inter-net. Proverbs also says the fear of man is a snare. It’s true. Too many Christians have gotten tangled in the nets of people’s opinions. I’ve heard this is especially true for teens. But the net that seems to catch the big fish is pride. I think casinos refer to big spenders as “whales” and work hard to net them by appealing to their egos.

Probably every pastor has counseled, again and again, some net-stupid members. Some folks have no echolocation. I wish it were as easy as getting them to move to the west coast, but the people here are pretty tangled in sin too. If too many young people are net-stupid, it is because our culture doesn’t encourage them to carefully listen to the instruction of godly parents. But it may also be because they have seen too many of those warning them against one net flying headlong into another. Consistency matters.

Sometimes it seems I haven’t done a great job teaching my boys to avoid the nets, but I did give each one a knife.

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Above All Jewels

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Mark

My favorite passage from The Fellowship of the Ring is probably the scene where Gimli meets Galadriel. For several centuries elves and dwarves had distrusted each other, and Gimli had been blind-folded when brought into this enchanted land of the high elves, so Gimli’s response to Galadriel is surprising:

She looked upon Gimli, who sat glowering and sad, and she smiled. And the Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own  ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes; and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding. Wonder came into his face, and then he smiled in answer.

Gimli, with undwarvish graciousness declares Galadriel “above all the jewels that lie beneath the earth.” Gimli is smitten by her goodness and beauty.

Many people today have dwarvish suspicions of God. Unfortunately, many raised in the church have been wounded and have a long list of grievances. Others, especially those from a legalistic and lifeless religious tradition, have seen God as an enemy of the joys and pleasures of life. Some folks have spent many years avoiding enemy territory at church.

Yet, I know that if rebellious church kids, indeed all who regard God as an enemy, could look into the eyes of Jesus, they would be surprised to see only “love and understanding”. I pray for the “glowering and sad” to see the heart of their enemy and, like Gimli, declare their former enemy above all jewels.

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A Terrible Plan

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Mark

Sometimes the Bible depresses me. Yes, I know this is not the response I am supposed to have. And I have experienced all the good stuff (refreshing of the spirit, direction for life, encouragement to persevere) that testimonies about the Bible usually contain. Strangely, my depression comes when I take the Bible seriously—when I pay attention to what it says instead of just reading my favorite verses again and again.

Recently my Sunday school class studied Jesus’ teaching about the narrow and broad way:

          Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the ways broad that
leads  to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is
small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Matt. 7:13—14

Although the words “destruction” and “life” may not be about hell and heaven, more go to destruction than life. And in this context (see v. 21), Jesus seems to be talking about those who make it into his kingdom and inherit eternal life.

If this outcome (most lost and a few saved) was God’s plan from the beginning, it seems like a terrible plan. It is depressing. Imagine planning a school trip but knowing that the bus load of kids will go off the road into the river. And also knowing that ten of the thirty kids will escape alive. Knowing most will drown in the sinking bus, would we go ahead with the planned trip? Would any sane person say, “Let’s do this! Ten will be saved!” But what if you loved all thirty kids with a perfect love? How could you say this is a good plan?

Solution One: What’s on TV? Let’s just not think about these verses. Do you think the Trailblazers can come back and win the series against the Spurs?

Solution Two: God is God and can do whatever He wants. Who are we to say his plan is terrible? Read Romans 9:20! If God has planned from eternity for some to burn for eternity, who are we to criticize?

Solution Three: God gave everyone the freedom to choose life or death, but knew most would be lost. He went ahead with his plan for the sake of the few who choose to enter the narrow gate. The many destroyed (because they refuse salvation) is the price God is willing to pay for some to be saved.

Solution Four: Sin and destruction were never God’s plan and even Adam and Eve had the freedom to obey God rather than the serpent. God was waiting to see what Adam and Eve and mankind would choose to do.

I suspect the first solution is my default setting. I have enough positive and uplifting verses underlined to make my own gospel—I don’t need to think about this depressing stuff. It is easy not to think about the implications of our proclamations.

The second solution is a theological way of saying, “Shut-up”. It may sound like a defense of God’s sovereignty, but gives us many reasons to question whether God is love. My question isn’t whether God is just, but rather what view is consistent with the idea of a loving Heavenly Father. No view of the sovereignty of God should violate the biblical revelation of His love.

The third view is attractive because it preserves the foreknowledge of God. It is, however, troubling because it means God embarked on plan that He knew would fill hell with people. Why would God go ahead with a plan that He knows will result in those he loves suffering for eternity?

Solution four gets rid of the bad plan (few saved, most lost) by arguing that in the beginning this wasn’t the plan. It asserts, however, that God did not have foreknowledge of what Adam and Eve would choose. Had Adam and Eve not sinned, God would have established his dominion over the earth through their unfallen off-spring. In this view, God is not so limited that he needs our sin to accomplish his purpose.

The fourth approach also seems compatible with the heart of a loving father. We have children knowing that they will have the freedom to plunge into sin and break our hearts. We also know they are free to choose Christ –to choose life. I am sure that if some parents, some with children now in prison, had perfect foreknowledge of everything their children would do, they would have chosen to not have children.

We might be tempted to say it is different with God, but consider Genesis 6: 5—6:

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was very great on the
            earth, and that every intent of his heart was only evil continually. The
            Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved
            in His heart.

It really makes no sense for God to regret making man if from the beginning He knew this all would happen. If all this sin was foreseen or part of his plan, why would He regret having made man? If he really knew that he would regret having made man, why did he do it?

God values real relationship so much that He risked us choosing sin rather than Him. It was a huge risk. In Adam and Eve’s fall we all fell. I could object that the risk was too great—that the few saved are not worth the destruction of the many.

It is at this point I am lost. Why does God value us so much? Does He need the redeemed so much that He would risk most folks being lost? But surely God needs nothing—not even us. So does Jesus need a bride? And what does that mean? Is there a difference between God wanting something and God needing something?

Whatever it is that God is about—it must be important enough for Him to risk some being lost for eternity. Ultimately God’s joy over the redeemed may be greater that his grief over the lost. I don’t get this. The good that follows the Bride being united with the Bridegroom may produce something wonderful enough to justify the risk God has taken.

This is a little less depressing—a little more exciting, but mostly sobering.

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True Grit

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Mark

Today we think of duty as dull, so it may surprise us that duty plays such an important role in the high adventure of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is, in fact, the hobbits’ commitment to duty that eventually overthrows the powers of evil in Middle-earth. Tolkien, who had experienced the trench warfare of WWI, knew one’s duty was often miserable.  After escaping from the goblins and Gollum in dark caves of the misty mountains, Bilbo thinks of his companions:

“But all the while a very uncomfortable thought was growing inside him.  He    wondered whether he ought not, now he had the magic ring, to go back into the horrible,  horrible, tunnels and look for his friends. He had just made up his mind that it was his duty that he must turn back—and very miserable he felt about it—when he heard voices.”

It is this grudging and trudging doing of one’s duty even when miserable that Tolkien finds most heroic—and that he places center stage in his stories.

In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam slog through the land of Mordor day after dark day without much hope and with no expectation that anyone will every record their deeds. Duty alone keeps them going: Sam’s duty to Frodo and Frodo’s duty to all of Middle-earth. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli pursue the orcs who have taken Merry and Pippin captive, not because of their strategic importance but because of duty and friendship.

Duty is perhaps a combination of two virtues. The first is a clear sense of what is right and noble that comes from having a moral compass. The second is the perseverance that overcomes all discomfort and obstacles to do what is right. Duty, as understood by Tolkien, is not a slavish devotion to the expectations of others. Often his heroes are alone when they decide to do what duty requires. Duty is obedience to one’s conscience and a transcendent standard of right and wrong.

Some education researchers have asserted that those who succeed academically are not always the smartest or most gifted, they are the “grittiest”. They go on to define grit as the willingness to do boring stuff, to work at developing skills, and the courage to overcome failure. The problem educators have run into is that they don’t know how to teach “grittiness”.  I don’t know either. I suspect teaching virtues instead of just information might be a beginning. Certainly reading Tolkien could awaken students to the beauty of duty.

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Doors Flung Wide

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Mark

After misery and some close calls with cave trolls, Bilbo and the dwarves descend into the beautiful valley of Rivendell. There, Tolkien tells us, “they all came to the Last Homely House and found its doors flung wide.” Tolkien, a professor of medieval English literature, used homely in oldest sense of friendly. Today we might use the word “homey” to describe a warm and welcoming place. In the middle of this wilderness, this house was the last safe place—last house of healing and friendship.

This house of Elrond is Tolkien’s ideal home: “His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into that valley.” Christian story-tellers need a Rivendell. It is where we find Bilbo finishing his own writing in The Lord of the Rings. The elves of Rivendell treasured stories and songs and encouraged those who wrote them. Here no one was forced to make the false choice between stories and high adventure.

In Rivendell Bilbo and the dwarves are refreshed and re-equipped. Tolkien says, “Their clothes were mended as well as their bruises, their tempers and their hopes.” We certainly live in a time when hopes can be battered and torn. A hard economy is smashing the hopes of many young people. We live in a wilderness of worldliness that is toxic to marriages and families. Churches struggle and pastors battle depression. It is not just writers who need a Rivendell, we all do. In the midst of all this we need Homely Houses that greet weary travelers with songs and mend their hopes with joy and wise counsel. We need doors flung wide.

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Plain Quiet Folk

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Mark

Tolkien’s The Hobbit begins with one dwarf after another arriving at Bilbo Baggins’ cozy home under the Hill. Earlier Gandalf had told Bilbo that he was looking for someone to share in an adventure.  Bilbo replies, “We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things. . . .We don’t want any adventures here, thank you!”

But then the dwarves start arriving—all 13. Tolkien explains that Bilbo was “beginning to wonder whether a most wretched adventure had not come right into his house.” It is one thing, of course, to go on an adventure and quite another to have it come right into your home.

I turned 60 this last year and now have a license to reminisce. Almost all of our adult life Teckla and I have asked God to bring adventure into our home. He has. We have almost never lived alone. For a couple years in graduate school, we had our own one bedroom apartment in student housing. But even there, we packed 20—30 people into our apartment once a week for a graduate student Intervarsity Bible study. For a year in Olathe we lived in the basement of the home of some dear friends—I suppose we were the adventure in their home. (Thank you Arlie and Marva!)

From there we moved to a big blue house that for the next three years was packed with adventures—some glorious and others wretched. At times we had as many staying at our big blue house as Bilbo had for dinner. And then we were in a little blue house in Kansas City where we had a long string of house guests.

Here in Myrtle Point, Teckla and I have lived with my mother and our four sons, their friends, their dogs, and even a grandchild. Most of the boys have their own places now, but still move in briefly between jobs or apartments.

Mom’s health is spotty right now so some of our adventures are of the medical sort—my least favorite. Even so, we have had a quiet winter, and I have gotten into a pleasant routine of building a fire in the evening, working some at my desk by the window, then watching a little TV with Teckla. I have, in fact, been a hobbit—except for the TV.

But I know this tranquility will be short-lived. Like Gandalf who marked poor Bilbo’s door, God seems to have marked our door with a rune that invites adventure. And perhaps even more likely, the door of our heart has been marked. The door may groan a little on its hinges, but it still swings wide. We do not yet have any treasure to show for our adventures, but we have fought dragons.

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You’ve Got a Friend

Posted on March 2, 2014 by Mark

In Coos Bay where I teach we have seen over the last ten years a marked increase in homeless people with signs standing at corners. Many of the regulars have dogs with them. Friday I saw one of the homeless riding his bike down the highway. A light rain was falling, and the clothes and face of the man were covered in grime; he looked as though he had been sleeping in the brush or under the bridge. But in a basket on his handlebars was the bright blond face of a puppy.

For a moment I was tempted to feel sorry for the dog. However, I have been watching the homeless with their dogs and noticed the kindness they show them. I suspect most the dogs are well cared for, so I reserve my compassion for their owners.

That those who cannot feed themselves would love and care for a dog is a testimony to how deeply we all need to love and be loved. And the capacity of dogs to love without judgment or reproach must be a great comfort to those burdened with failure and disappointment. So I am neither mad nor sad that the homeless have pets. I am glad.

A regular who begs outside the McDonald’s holds a sign saying, “I am ugly. Have no friends and want beer.” He actually is ugly—clothes dirty and stringy hair hanging in his face. He has, however, a beautiful grey and white pit bull on a leash that jumps happily about his feet. So his sign isn’t completely true.

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Shaken and Stirred

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Mark

The Pilgrim in Dante’s Inferno discovers a great landslide in the Seventh Circle of hell. His guide, the noble pagan Virgil, explains that the last time he had come this way there was no landslide but then remembers that “was just before the coming of the One who took from Hell’s first circle the great spoil, that this abyss of stench, from top to bottom began to shake, so I thought the universe felt love.”

I like the thought of love sending a shudder through the universe—causing landslides even in hell. Much of this world has become “an abyss of stench” buried deep in darkness, seemingly beyond the reach of God’s love. We need a hell shattering love to shake the world today. Let my heart be the epicenter.

 

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Startled

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Mark

I saw a European starling this afternoon. This is not startling news—they form huge flocks this time of year and can be quite a nuisance. They are even called sturnus vulgaris: a rather ugly name, even in Latin. When they descend upon a neighborhood, their noise can be quite annoying and their droppings a serious mess. It is one of the few birds you can legally kill at will since they can damage crops that are just sprouting.

A single starling came to the bird feeder late this afternoon as the sun was setting. A single ray of sunlight caught it at the feeder and lit up the iridescent blues and purples of its dark feathers. Its breast was delicately streaked with lines of white lace. Out of the flock and alone in the light, the starling was truly seen by me for the first time. It was glorious.

Yesterday, I saw four bald eagles. After a hike down the beach, Teckla and I watched two immature eagles wheeling in the sky at the mouth of the New River. But what I saw today at my feeder was more profound. It made me think of how we don’t truly see people until we see them as individuals caught in the light of God’s love.

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