Mark's Letters

Often Mira, our son’s Doberman, picks up her bone and presents it us when we arrive home. In a previous blog I referred to this as dog evangelism. She has something she enjoys and happily shares it. But Mira has another habit, one more annoying. She will pick up the bone, place it on our leg, and chew away at it. Since this covers me with bits of bones floating in drool, I often grab the bone and hold it carefully by one end while she chews the other. I’m not sure why, but she seems to enjoy eating in our presence. And except for the mess, I enjoy her enjoyment of the bone.

God seems to have enjoyed this type of thing too. He commanded the Israelites to gather the tithe and then “eat in the presence of the Lord your God.” (Deut. 14:23) We have reduced the Lord’s Supper to a wafer and shot of grape juice, but it too is a kind of eating in God’s presence. And although we relegate them to the less sacred space of fellowship halls, churches often have potluck suppers which may come closest to the holy feasts of the Old Testament. All of this is to say that God enjoys our enjoyment of his gifts in his presence. I suspect that we, in our humanity and weakness, may be as messy and mindless in our enjoyment as Mira is when chewing her bone on my leg. But it’s okay. I love Mira. God loves us. The bone is good and there is fried chicken at the potluck dinner.

 Growing up on the Oregon coast, I did a lot of skim-boarding. When the last part of a wave slid over the sand in a thin sheet, I would throw down my board, run as hard as I could, plant both feet on the board, and then skim down the beach for thirty or forty yards. At my most agile, I could jump off as the board slowed down, push the board to some more thin water and then jump on again for another ride.

But several things could go wrong; the same things that often go wrong in our walk with God. First, it is essential to leap on the board with both feet—not just one. When only one foot lands, the board shoots away and you end up planting your head in hard, wet sand. Or even worse, one foot slides away while the other stays planted in the sand, twisting your knees or pulling your groin. Commitment to that initial leap is everything. In the same way, planting both feet firmly on Christ, really making a decision to follow him is essential. Our commitment provides the momentum for “skimming in the spirit”. How hard a skim-boarder runs and how solidly he hits the board determines the distance of the ride.

 The cool thing about skimming is that after the jump and landing, the ride is almost effortless. That thin layer of water carries you across the sand beautifully. But if you fail to notice that your ride is slowing, your board will catch the sand and stop abruptly while you fly off. Literally, your board will suck the sand and you will stumble or fall. All the grace and beauty of the ride turns ugly. And wet sand will take off your skin. This sucks spiritually too.  Often our commitment to Christ needs to be renewed, our momentum regained. Sloth and inattention can make us stumble or fall. But if we notice our ride slowing, we can take another run, and make another leap.  We can keep skimming in the Spirit.

The whole process of throwing the board, running, and then jumping works best when done in one smooth movement. When my boys were first learning to skim-board, they would just drop the board, take a few steps and jump on the board. The board sank and sucked the sand, and in frustration, they slid off. They went nowhere and (at first) decided this skim-boarding thing either didn’t “work” or was “too hard”. Many who have tried to be Christians have had the same experience. With hesitation and uncertainty, they have plopped onto the board and gone nowhere. Their experience sucked just like a grounded skim-board. They too are tempted to conclude that this Christian thing doesn’t work or that it is too hard.

However, skimming in the spirit is dynamic, not static; it is following Jesus wherever he leads, not plopping in a pew. The board must be moving, we must be running, and we must jump and land with both feet. Nothing but total commitment will take us gliding down a beautiful Oregon beach.

Along with the Bible, I began reading Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Samuel Beckett while in high school. For school I read some Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and Joseph Conrad. Like a hyperactive child calmed by stimulants, I discovered that all these secular writers had a spiritual impact on me. The roaring and nihilistic hedonism of Kerouac’s On the Road encouraged me face life fearlessly, but also revealed the utter emptiness of living for pleasure or the next high. The absurdist drama of Samuel Beckett echoed the truths of Ecclesiastes, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Unlike many who rid the world of God but want to keep the purpose and morality theism provides, Beckett was honest enough to fully face the absurdity of a godless existence. Conrad’s Lord Jim chronicled the impossibility of self-redemption and self-transformation—the horrifying chasm between what we long to be and what we actually are. Fitzgerald showed the power of self-deception, the utter deceitfulness of the human heart, and the emptiness of the American materialistic dream. Hemmingway who had written so much about grace under pressure committed suicide in Idaho. After reading Ginsberg’s “Howl”, I wanted a Jesus who walked down the same streets and alleys as Ginsberg’s burnt-out hipsters in search of an “angry fix”. We needed a God who went downtown—who took truth and holiness into the dirty streets of America.

I journeyed to the east with Hermann Hesse while listening to Santana. In Steppenwolf Hesse beautifully expressed my own alienation from bourgeois society. The centrality of a spiritual quest resonated with me in Siddhartha. In Magister Ludi Hesse affirmed the emptiness of intellectualism detached from love and service. Just as I was about to be seduced by the glass-bead game of graduate school, Hesse reminded me that without love we are, no matter how erudite, just “a clanging cymbal.” All my travels to the east brought me back to the cross–where east meets west.

Admittedly these writers offered no cure—no real hope. But their diagnosis of modern man’s disease was devastatingly accurate and biblical. In some passages they recorded the achingly beautiful moments of life. But they had no one to thank for such beauty. In the end, no human works, no grace under pressure, could change the human heart or give meaning to existence. A godless existence should make us howl for meaning.

These writers drove me to re-read the Bible as a document of razor-sharp realism. As the Bible and modern writers proclaim, we are hopelessly corrupt but never happily corrupt. We long for holiness but fail to find it in ourselves or in one another. We inescapably know we are more than animals, so we can never happily live as animals. We are fallen but haunted by God because we are made in his image. Isaiah’s mocking of the absurdity of idolatry and Ecclesiastes’ despair over the meaningless of all things under the sun are confirmed by modern literature. Modern writers sent me back to the Bible where I found a bracing philosophical sophistication and the truth about the human heart.

Today Teckla and I took Mira (our son’s doberman) up to Euphoria Ridge for a hike in the woods. Out of the car, Mira immediately took off up the trail, sniffing every tree and bush. By the time we had passed the gate and started up the trail, Mira had already sprinted far ahead and was now galloping back toward us to see what was taking so long.

This was her pattern. Mira would run far ahead, stop, see if we were still moving her direction and then run further. Sometimes we simply stopped for a moment. When Mira discovered we were out of sight, she raced back to us. Mira has been up this trail about a dozen times so she usually takes the right fork without waiting for our lead. To teach obedience, we occasionally stop, step out of sight, and yell, “Come, Mira.”

Of course all this running up and down the trail takes lots of energy. She travels every part of the trail two or three times. And our little obedience lessons add even more running. This is great when we are taking a short walk because Mira gets a lot of exercise quickly. But on long walks she gets exhausted too soon. Only after the exhaustion hits will Mira walk right beside us. We like her close so we can break her habit of eating disgusting things she finds in the wild: scats and dead birds.

I long to follow Jesus, but I am often more like Mira: sprinting up the trail, guessing which way to go, running the direction we went last time, discovering I can’t see the master, racing back in a panic, wagging my hands in worship, and then doing it all again. Sometimes I wonder where God has gone, but hear the call, “Come, Mark”. I may not eat disgusting things, unless fast food counts; or roll on dead things, unless television counts. However, I have often exhausted myself by running ahead of Jesus instead of walking by his side.