Verve and Dear Life

I'm just going to say it.  I have needed inspiration for a while now.  This season in teaching, this last month, is really tough, and I haven't found my momentum for it.  I find that this is kind of horrible.  What an awkward feeling to try and shake in such a lovely season like spring.   I think any teacher reading this right now might feel it....it's not specific to me.  But it's a lethargic, dull place I want to hold loosely, if at all.  Movement, please. 

I had a few experiences over the weekend where people I knew well said something back to me about myself.  We do not often see ourselves the way others see us.  I was introduced at a bridal shower, in front of a bunch of people I didn't know, as a very inspiring person and teacher.  And I certainly did not feel that way.  I felt sort of schluppy, and very paper-ridden.  Paper-ridden!  What sort of adjective is that for a person?  But right now it's the only one I feel. 

The upswing though, after admitting this feeling (and just a feeling) of a season...I have found this inspiration. 



# 1

First, I bought a book this weekend that said a lot to me.  I bought it when  I spent the afternoon as an introvert at Barnes and Noble, sauntering by people without seeing them, and thinking solidly about books.  Nothing more.  This always, always helps.  

The book I bought is called 'The Furious Longing of God' by Brennan Manning, who is someone authentically true.  You see this in his work.

Here is what drew me in from the back cover....

"Imagine a stormy day at sea, your ship yielding to a relentless wind, pummeled by crashing waves, subject to the awesome force of nature.  A force that is both fierce and majestic.  A power that is nothing short of furious. 

Such is God's intense, consuming love for His children.  It's a love that knows no limits and no boundaries.  A love that will go to any lengths, and take any risks, to pursue us. 

Renowned author and ragamuffin Brennan Manning presents a love story for the brokenhearted.  For those who are burdened by heavy religion.  It is a provocative and poignant look at the radical, no-holds-barred love of our Heavenly Father.  It is a message that will forever change how you view God."

Sounds interesting, right?   Here is what you read on the second page of the book.... 
"A few of us worked on the shrimp boats whenever they needed help. It was short-term work, ten days at sea, trawling for shrimp, flounder, snapper.  We were always careful when we went to sea.  Always.

One day we were on our way home from Beaumont when we caught the tail end of a Texas tailstorm.  The water was calm at first.  And our forty-five-foot-long boat bobbed lazily in the water like the boat on the cover of this book.  But suddenly the clouds gathered and the temperature dropped.  The sea began to churn, sweeping spray across the bow.  Waves pummeled the sides of the boat.  Our seasoned captain told us to get below.  Below deck, we reached for metal handles and dear life.

I was convinced we were going to die.

Then the storm, the real storm, hit.  Winds of 120 miles per hour.  Sudden swells ten feet high.  It was fury unleashed. 

Someone once said, 'If a man would learn to pray, let him go to sea.'
My life has been a life lived in God's furious longing.  And I have learned to pray."


The rest of the book talks about what it means to know God's tenderness.  Know it and live it and feel it from all sides.  It says that God longs for us.  I forget this, or struggle to believe it, and then I am once again surprised by what this feels like.  It feels like total peace and rest.  What has changed is my once singular view of the word 'fury', that's for sure. 

This book inspires because it is so much more than boats.  It's also things like, 'the isness of what shall be', which made total sense to me when I read it.  But I will skip ahead and tell you that the last pages of the book say this....(and we're back to boats here)....


"When the night is bad and my nerves are shattered and the waves break over the sides, Inifinity speaks.  God Almighty shares through His Son the depth of His feelings for me, His love flashes into my soul, and I am overtaken by mystery.  These are moments of kairos - the decisive inbreak of God's fury into my personal life's story.

It is then that I face a momentous decision.  Shivering in the rags of my seventy-four years, I have two choices.  I can escape below into skepticism and intellectualism, hanging on for dear life.  Or, with radical amazement, I can stay on deck and boldly stand in surrendered faith to the truth of my belovedness, caught up in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God.  And learn to pray."


So yes, I'd say that helps the soul and the self that is me. 
Consider this book.


#2
The other inspiration is a reminder of life.  It's something I really meant when I wrote it out a few months ago.  I didn't put it out into the great wide world then because I just didn't care to.  But the gist of it is here now...

I want to have a beautiful life.  Each and every day, down in my bones, infused with God and expressing something beautiful.   Lately I call it verve.  When I looked it up, I learned that verve is the enthusiasm that poets and artists have for life.  How fitting and true. 

With verve, the world is seen with, as Roald Dahl says, glittering eyes, and you have the space to see all of the magical things that are happening around you.  Verve also brings the attitude of courage that faces the things that are heartrending.  You get that in your days too.  I say yes to verve.

I want to have, in light of a complex world, a very simple way of doing everything.   It is noticed.  And it matters.  When it doesn’t feel like that (there are many times in this broken world when it has not) I still want to remember it and say it is true.  Less is more and what I do matters.   

I want to be without guile and pretension.  Intention instead.  Intention everywhere.  And rest and peace to go along with it too, so that I know when I want to be quiet instead of trying to solve all of the problems of the world.  In matters of speaking, I want to improve the silence.  If it’s not something that adds to life, I don’t want to say it.  Instead, so it doesn’t poison me, as some thoughts will if left alone inside, I will say, ‘I am angry, God, and this is why…’  He can handle it and first and foremost, this is my help.  This is the peace and rest and wealth of the Christian life. 

In life, I want to be a person who can stop and cease striving.  Because of grace, I know that the workings of my soul can have balance and purpose and peace.  God gives me full approval and has made me significant to Him.  When I am lateral in these thoughts, I dwindle and fade and unhinge.  With a vertical focus, and in the practice of the presence of God, I am free.  I already have approval and provision and breathing room and grace in a weary world.   ‘God and one are majority’ after all.

            When I speak to be people, I want them to know that they have my full attention.  I want to be gracious in difficult situations because it’s something I can do for the world.  True grace would not begrudge it all later either.  I think that’s also called having class.  I want to be a lady.  And, as Margaret Thatcher so artfully said, ‘Power is like being a lady.  If you have to say you are, you aren’t.’   How true this has become in teaching, in conversation, in keeping the soul aloft.  Sometimes, if you have to say it that much, it’s not true.

            At night I want to go to sleep in peace because God is awake (so says Victor Hugo).  I want to write beautiful and honest things in the morning with coffee by my side and have blinking, yawning thoughts opening to possibility with the day in front of me.  I want to enjoy more and endure less (reminiscent of Kari’s intention too), and see things with hope in God’s character even when I don’t understand it. 

            When I worry, I want to remember God’s faithfulness to people through the ages, and the reality of God making a covenant with himself because he knew Abraham couldn’t on his own.  Speaking to Elijah in a whisper after the wind.  Sticking with the Israelites for 40 years, even in the pain of wandering.  Creating a fascinating star that men would follow to Bethlehem.  Making the weak strong.  Stopping to converse with a healed woman who had only touched the robe of Jesus to become well.  Calming the storm. 

            So far in life, the times when I have lived most abundantly are when I have taken the time to be grateful.  Not just after the fact, but before and in the midst of something too.  Why does God talk to us in our gratitude?  Is it really the heart’s memory?  That’s a French saying, and it’s true.  I think we are meant to see things and feel things from all sides, and too often, in minimalist thinking, this is what I forfeit.  Yes to gratitude in each and every day.

I want to live out old shining things.  Live by them, and have their verve (that word again) living in me.  I want to create something that becomes an old shining thing.  Can an old shining thing be a style?  If so, this is what I would be.  It’s like the thing I saw the other day that reminded me of my job as a teacher.  ‘Learn something new.  Teach something old.’ 

‘Old shining thing’ is how my soul looks when it’s unhidden and authentic and me.  And when I live by it thoughtfully, it encapsulates the solid things other writers say, a quality view of inspiring women, my own collection of best souls in the form of friends and family, why the character of book characters matter and shape me, what jewelry I want to wear, how I want to greet the day, the struggle and art of teaching, heartfelt grace, how the great wide world has become this beautiful, tangled redeemed thing, where I go, what I do, and of course, always, what makes writing alive. 

To this end…who knows? I certainly feel that I am the one without the answers.  But today God is telling me to keep my eyes open.  And that all of this is something rather good.