perspective

trampling over death by death

To put it succinctly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor and a theologian in Germany who was involved in a conspiracy to kill Hitler. He was arrested by the Nazis and, over a year later, executed 3 weeks before the war ended, and 2 weeks before his prison camp was liberated by the Allies. As he walked out of his prison cell to be hanged, he turned to his prison mate and said, "This is the end--for me, the beginning of life."

As I read the account of Bonhoeffer's last days, I saw him living - and dying - with complete and unquestioning faith in the incredible gift Jesus has given us:

He has given us life.

He has conquered death

We have nothing to fear.

We will be with Him, the Creator of the universe, forever.

Death shows that the world is not what it should be, but that it needs redemption. Christ alone overcomes death. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: 'Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades." - Revelation 1:17-18

HE IS RISEN! 

And because He's alive, I live.

jellicle songs for jellicle cats

I do not have a good history with cats.

Cooper hated me, probably because I put him in the closet once and forgot about him for many hours. Or because I liked to hold him like a baby, aww, da wittle beebee Coopy. He used to hide behind corners and attack my legs when I walked past. Once he bit me and then I grabbed him and bit him back. I got a mouthful of fur and he walked away like he was smarter than I was.

Dinah did love me, until I had her declawed and spayed. Then she didn't like when I touched her, as though she held me personally responsible for her loss of womanhood. I imagined her thinking something like, "I like to think you will disappear someday when I open my eyes." Instead I made her disappear.

The cat we have now we never named, because we couldn't think of one. We've had her for 7 years and she's fat with a little head and little legs that spread far apart when she sits down, because there's so much fat in between them. "Kitty, sit like a lady," I tell her. She looks at me, legs apart, and then I say, "Kitty, you're stupid." I call her Stupid now. Especially when she meows directly outside my door at 6:30 in the morning because she wants to be fed. As if she needs food. "Kitty, you are fat," I tell her, poking her belly with my toe as she lay on the floor. One time Brother tried to feed her tuna juice with a turkey baster, cradling her in his arm like a newborns. One time I smushed her face with my hands so that her ears were over her eyes like little awnings and her cheeks scrunched up around her eyes and made them all squinty, and then I proceeded to laugh so hard that the tears streamed down my cheeks. I don't really like her very much. "Kitty, I don't like you very much," I tell her, as she walks into my room. Then I throw in for good measure, "Stupid."

Then let's not forget Demon Cat who, just yesterday, attacked my arm in the same place where the scar from his previous savagery still lingers, a light purple reminder of how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken away by a bengal spy cat. 

But even with my unfortunate past with kitties, I want one. I want it to be a boy and I have several literary characters' names listed out to name him, depending on what he looks like and what his personality is like. Dad won't let me get one, because he knows I'll be leaving sometime and he doesn't want to get stuck with another cat. But I want one, as soon as I move out and have enough money to support us, me and my feline refugee. We are going to be best friends, and he is going to sleep on my bed and purr, and his breath is not going to smell like Meow Mix, and when I say, "Who wants a fresher house?" he is going to raise his paw. Because my cat is going to be perfect.

true story

So there's this girl. Let's call her Eleanor. (I've been naming a lot of things Eleanor lately. And by "a lot of things," I mean myself when I pretend to be a famous actress being interviewed in my bathroom mirror.) She's a pretty outgoing young woman, and pretty active in the community. She has to be, you see, because she's an only child, and her father is an extremely busy military leader, so she gets lonely. She's an extrovert, you see, and we extroverts need people in our lives, because when we don't have them we resort to pretending to be famous actresses being interviewed in our bathroom mirror.

So Eleanor teaches dance. That's what she does for a living. That and probably she's a baker. Maybe a seamstress, too. She's young, but girls like her know a lot of trades. She's pretty liked in town, because she's honest and genuine, and she has a fun spirit. People like girls with fun spirits. At least that's what my pretend interviewer says when he interviews me about my latest movie, in which I play a girl with a fun spirit. Aw, shucks.

But Eleanor isn't bashful. Nooo, not at all. She's a strong young woman. How has she not been married off yet? She has thick, dark curly hair, and dark skin, and brown eyes the color of molasses. A guy could get lost in those tresses and all-consuming brown eyes. Have you ever tried to escape a pit of molasses? It's impossible. Point proven.

But she wants to be married. Not in a "gimmee gimmee gimmee a man after midnight" kind of way, but it's a resigned desire that she keeps close to her heart while she's teaching couples to dance for their wedding receptions. And she wants it, even more than she loves dancing and baking and sewing, though she's great at all those things. It's her one desire. And she knows it's coming. She just knows that she has to wait, and it'll come.

And it's not like she's completely alone. She and her father are pretty close. For all his military maneuverability, he's a loving, doting father. His name is Jephthah. Whoa, what? Yeah. His mom had just had 4 teeth pulled before Jep was born, so her mouth was still numb and full of cotton balls when the nurse asked her what she wanted to name him. Really she wanted to name him Harry. It got lost in translation.

Jephthah and Eleanor have a pretty strong bond. They get each other. He loves her like no other, because his wife is absent from the picture, and Jep used to take Eleanor on these grand adventures, riding camels and swimming in oases and generally being the apple of his eye. He'd do anything for her, like pay $9000 for a wedding dress because she was a former Miss Delaware. (If the government's looking for some money, they should check Say Yes to the Dress.) He'd had a rough life, too. His mom was a woman of ill repute (and unkempt teeth, apparently) because his father evidently had no self control. And Jep's brothers from another mother were kind of jerks, the hoity toity type, and they chased Jep away saying, "No inheritance for you!"

Well for the past few months Jep has been at war, and this is a big war. If he wins this war, he becomes general of the whole kit and kaboodle. (That's what they call armies where Jep comes from.) And today Eleanor happens to be rehearsing the "I want to be in America, la la la la in America" scene from West Side Story, which the local theater has asked her to choreograph for their spring production of the torrential musical. So to get in the mood before class, she blasts the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on her stereo and dances around the house.Then she opens her front door, her swooshy skirt piled high on her thigh in Latino flair, and there's her father, Jephthah, walking towards the house, looking bedraggled.

Eleanor's first reaction is to greet her father with an enthusiastic "Daddy!" and throw her arms around him with daughterly affection. But before she can, he falls to his knees, rips open his shirt, scattering buttons everywhere, and throws his hands up in the air in agony, like that scene from Platoon with Willem Defoe.

Eleanor stops dancing and stares at her father. He's in tears, literally weeping into the ground, and Eleanor thinks that the only other time she's seen her father cry was when Goose dies in Top Gun, and that emotion paled in comparison to what she was witnessing now.

"Why'd you have to do it?" He asks.
"Do what?" Eleanor asks, genuinely afraid, curious, and concerned for her father as she would be for a wounded wild animal.
"I made a vow to the Lord that, if He helped me win this war, I would sacrifice the first thing that come out of my house when I came home."

Now, my response to this would be, "You WHAT?! I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO LIVES HERE, who'd you think was going to come out of your house?! DID YOU EVEN THINK THIS THROUGH??" Or maybe I would have been coy and said, "So...how'dya do?" Or maybe I just would've taken off running very, very fast, and never looked back.

But Eleanor and I are very different. She squares her jaw and looks at her father and says, "Do what you promised." Then she walks through the city and says goodbye to all the people who love her, and she comes to terms with the fact that she'll never be a wife, or a mother, or have any of the things she dreamed about having, and she lets her father offer her as a human sacrifice to the Lord.

The end.

Just kidding!

No but seriously, that's where it ends. Read Judges 11 if you don't believe me.

Sometimes I don't understand the Old Testament.

rainboots

I took my rainboots for a walk.
I knew that they would never talk to me
the way I wished somebody would,
but as I stood out in the wind & rain I knew
I wouldn't hear them if they could.

I wanted them to see the day,
to present them to the world
& say, "Here we are! my rainboots and I."

Did they know what it felt like to fly
on a swing, grasping cold iron rings in your hands
& leaving your fingers to smell like rust?

Or swap the dust of the diamond
for puddles like lakes of fallen sky
& mud that suctions you to the ground?

Could they hear the thunder, humming
like the strumming of God's bass vocal chords
& resounding promise of His presence?

Did they understand what it meant
that the ice is being sent into the earth
& what worth there is in a tiny crocus bud?

But silly me! they are just rainboots;
their skin is made of rubber flesh
& they cannot soak in a poetic life,
so I did it for them, ad hoc,
and wrote this poem on a walk with my rainboots.

"I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry...and I think it's nicer...to look at it through poetry." - Anne of Avonlea

the eating habits of dragons

I like to listen to sermons when I jog. And now that I have access to a treadmill where I nanny 3 days a week, I am packing in the sermons. Podcasts are da bomb.

Sometimes, though, I get scared that someone is going to break into the house while I'm jogging in the basement, perfectly content with my ear buds in and the sweat dripping down my back. (I am not a delicate exerciser. It is an unpleasant thing to behold. In the weight room in college, I was running on the treadmill and a guy walked past, looked at me, then looked again, his eyebrows coming together in a very concerned wrinkle. Yes, I'm fine. It's natural that my face looks this way. This is why I'm thankful the treadmill I now use is in a basement, where there are no windows.)

But then, after I think, "What if someone breaks in?" I assuage myself with the image of the intruder stopping at the top of the basement stairs and listening for signs of life. He would hear:

thump

thump

thump

thump

BAHAHAHA

thump

thump

thump

thump

Then he would assume that, like Rochester, these people were keeping an insane person locked away in their house, and he would flee in fear. But not before RAJAH THE NINJA CAT takes him out with one swift swipe of his devil claws! Because there's nothing so fulfilling as combining Charlotte Bronte with 21st century spy drama.

Meanwhile I am in the basement, thudding away on the treadmill, listening to a sermon from the Vineyard. If you haven't listened to a sermon from VCC, I highly encourage you to extract your carving knife from whatever drawer you keep it in and carve out some time to listen. They've just finished a series on generosity, and the last sermon had me in stitches as I ran my 4.8 miles per hour.

It also had me contemplating, as all VCC sermons do, my own heart. If Mr. Burglar stood long enough at the top of the stairs, he also would have heard me exclaim, "Amen," and possibly, "Yeah, Heather," because sometimes the wiser part of me feels like the stupider part of me really needs to grasp certain concepts. Oh, Wiser Me, you're so wise. Love, Stupider Me.

So, inspired by Kevin's sermon, I was thinking about generosity, gratefulness, contentedness, etc. I remember my VCC small group leader a couple of years ago making the comment, "When was the last time you saw a commercial that said, 'Everything you have is okay; just keep what you have'?" It is very true that, no matter how much stuff I have, I am always looking for what else could be mine.

Mmm, I want those seasons of Chuck.

Oooh, I want a First Aid Kit CD.

Ahhh, I want a new skirt for spring.

MORE AHAVA.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day (it's not that impressive - I only read the Personal Journal section, and even then I usually choose the articles with the biggest pictures) about happiness vs. purpose. Research shows that those who pursue happiness are actually less likely to be happy than those who pursue purpose. Ironic! Those with purpose in life live longer, are less prone to diseases like Alzheimer’s, and report more of an over-all sense of well-being. The article talked about people desiring the feeling of watching a great movie or eating a great meal, versus people who work with the homeless or are family-oriented. 

That's the part that really got me. 

College-aged kids experience more emotional and psychological problems today than they did 100 years ago, because the focus of life has shifted from relationships, family, and community, to material things, possessions, and achievement.

I've been there. I know what it's like to search for happiness, and that search is always going to come up fruitless. Happiness doesn't last; it will always run out, end, or slip through our fingers. And then we're left with that empty feeling that shoots us on another quest to fill it. But I've been thinking about ending the search for "more" and instead living in gratitude for what I have. I think it's there that we find purpose. And underlying purpose is that steady joy and confidence that God gives, because He never runs out, ends, or slips through our fingers.

So, instead of making a list of "I want," what's my list of "I'm grateful for"?

When you live in gratitude, it is really, really hard to live in sin. - Jon Weece

P.S. This post had nothing to do with dragons or what they eat...but I was afraid if I titled it something like "What I'm Learning About God," nobody would read it. People are much more likely to read about what I'm learning about dragons.

ode

Excuse me while I rub my legs together like a mute cricket. This could go on for a while.

My mom and dad spent a couple weeks in Israel, and upon their return they brought Ahava.

...Do you hear that? I think angels are singing.

False alarm, it was just my legs. Aaaaahaaaavaaaa.

Ahava is a brand of skin care products made with minerals from the Dead Sea. Ma & Da brought some body wash and lotion back for the family to experience...but it may or may not have yet to leave my shower cubby.

Do you ever wonder what it'd be like if God covered our bones and muscle with silk instead of skin? It would be like this, my friends. It would be exactly like this.

It's pretty expensive, so once these precious little bottles run out, I probably won't be experiencing this miracle of life until I am old and retired, when I decide to buy bottles of Ahava instead of a sports car.

Though, I wonder if I name my first born Ahava, could I get free stuff? And if I name my second born Avaha, does that warrant a lifetime supply? What if I name my third born Dead Sea?

I bet when we walk into our mansions in heaven, God will have stocked our bathrooms with gift baskets full of Ahava. And I bet our sheets will be Egyptian cotton, too.