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the patient mystery

February 29, 2012 in bits of theological ramblings with 6 Comments

It started with a simple comment during our Great Texts Capstone course, where we sit around the big, boardroom table and drain coffee cups and complain about dialectic.

“It’s not like Aristotle can hear us.”

“Maybe he can.”

I said it offhandedly, perhaps flippantly. But I’ve thought about it since. I wonder if Aristotle can hear us.

Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

I am not interested in a kind of Christian universalism. The revelation of Christ marks a clear point in which the standard of salvation emerges, that we must call on the name of the Lord to be saved, confess with our mouths the reality of the Redeemer.

But what of before?

As the lectionary has taken us through Genesis, it is interesting to trace God’s revelation of Himself. While He calls Jacob in Chapter 32, it is not until Chapter 35 that God begins to clarify who He is. Even then, Joseph takes a wife from the priests of Egypt, and it seems for a time that the One God is nothing more than a god out of many. It is not until the Exodus, it is not until tablet commandments and mountain descents, that Israel hears the Lord is God and God is One.

Again, I do not want to present this as a sort of Christian universalism, a byway by which we reconcile all our questions with the tidy presumption that mercy dictates permissiveness. Rather, I should like to consider the mystery of God’s patience in His revelation. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the One God, was less concerned with being the One God to the people He revealed Himself to until much later. There were other things to worry about. There were other parts of the Story that needed writing.

So what of Aristotle or Plato? We know that they both concluded that there was a Force behind all things and that such a Force was also good. Given the culture of most pagans of the time, the idea of a deity that was also good and benevolent and just was a bit absurd. And yet, by way of natural reason, so they concluded. What does it mean? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps they simply perished into Sheol.

… in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah …

I wonder why this bothers us. I wonder why we feel the need to ask. Is Aristotle in Heaven? Perhaps. Perhaps he is part of the communion of saints. Perhaps he can listen in on our conversation around that boardroom table where we pick apart his dialectic and miss, in the process, that he perhaps knew something of this One God, this God who reveals Himself slowly, who chose to reveal Himself slowly.

Perhaps this is a patient mystery. Perhaps there is more of a question mark over some of those souls before the mystery of God through the Person of Christ was revealed than we realize.

I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.

Maybe. Perhaps, at least, we should keep the question closer than we are comfortable with. The action of grace upon our hearts is a patient mystery, too.

absurd mercy, letter twelve, preston to hilary

February 28, 2012 in letters to hilary with 0 Comments

Today, I bring you the continuation of the blog banter Hilary Sherratt and I have doing, in which we write public letters to one another back and forth and invite you to join us in the comments. Read the letter I’m responding to here.

Dear Hilary,

“I forgot that we are dust.”

I did too. I forget it often. And I know when you wrote it you didn’t mean abasement, that you speak of the reality we overlook too often, that however hallowed and blessed we might be, we are ultimately inspirited earthenware. (This has come to mind most acutely when I work with clay in ceramics, when I think to touch by clay myself, ridiculous as it may seem, by feeling that dust from which we were formed, to which we return.)

You wrote of the fragile self, of needing to begin at Ash Wednesday. I think you’re right. These past days have been a challenge, abiding in the silent space with God. I am coming to understand that what He wants of me now is the obedience in the quiet, the sort of faithfulness that comes only when I dare to be still, to imagine a world in which nothing has been given but Him and that must, absolutely, be enough.

Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding,
Whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check,
Otherwise they will not come near to you.

The rub of this, isn’t it? The call to not need the Voice from the cloud each time we step forward, but to walk in His midst with an integrity of heart that longs for the right, chooses the right. But how to cultivate such quiet faith, such simple obedience? Continue Reading…

rend your heart, not your garment: today at deeper story

February 27, 2012 in reflections with 2 Comments

Today, I’m sharing over at Deeper Story.

Everything about it felt wrong. We filed into the nave, passing by the stained glass saints keeping vigil over this generation, living in another century only inches from where they watch. We were a small group: the one like a brother, the one who makes me laugh wildly, the one who spills grace with each word. It was not they who were wrong, but I.

Me, with all these past months of the silence of God, with the living in the shadow of the joy, the other side of the grace. I felt wrong; I felt out of place; I felt the exhaustion of not hearing.

Because I used to hear. I used to feel. I used to walk in the midst of Him, or rather, knew I walked in that space.

And rend your heart and not your garments.

Is it possible to do Lent wrong?

I was giving up Facebook. I felt no motivation to do anything else. Last year, I had heard the Lord speak clearly, and I gave up meat altogether except for feast days and, more significantly, abstained from the Eucharist. I had grown, deep and full, through such mortification, such discipline.

But this year, this year felt trite. Giving up Facebook isn’t much of a sacrifice, isn’t much a good that’s left to then return to in rejoicing once the fast is completed. Yet I had not heard otherwise. I had not heard, it seemed, at all. Giving up Facebook only seemed right. But that was all. It seemed right. It didn’t seem much like I had heard.

And I thought that perhaps, if the ashes were made on my forehead, if I took that sign to myself, then perhaps I would hear Him again, feel His presence burn into the sign of the cross made upon my face.

Continue with me on this journey, over at Deeper Story?

life: unmasked — the journey back

February 23, 2012 in life: unmasked with 3 Comments

Today, I share a post about life: unmasked, a blog meme started by my sensational friend, Joy.

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For the past month, my blog has not been my own. I was honored and amazed to host At the Lord’s Table, a series of guest posts from a host of diverse Christians all sharing in their experiences, their aches, their joys in the beautiful but mangled Body we call the Church. Except for a slightly controversial Deeper Story post and a letter or two to Hilary, I have not written a word in this space for what feels like years. Tonight, when I sat down to put into ether all the things that have swirled in my head and heart while I was away, I found the words had calcified. Too much has happened, too much of me has gone on in silence, that I’m not sure how to simply throw myself back into the vulnerability of this space or, in particular, the prosody of rhythmed hope and grace.

What do I say of the journey back? Do I tell you about the days where I felt that it had all fallen apart? Do I tell you about how getting into St. Andrews only confirmed my fear that the feeling of emptiness, of potential worthlessness, was not and had not been contingent on material blessing, but was a deep and weighted kind of aching, a space that needed refinement and pulling and growing?

Do I write of taco runs or hugging Rachel Held Evans? Do I write of taking the plunge and selling art to try and pay for this ridiculous journey to graduate school? (Shameless plug.) Do I tell of how hard it has been for me to love others, to want to love them, to live in the pattern of grace I had thought was such nature to my being?

Do I speak of the evil day, when I knew myself for the depravity within me and gaped in fear at myself? Continue Reading…

#ATLT: open the doors and see all the people, tamara lunardo

February 22, 2012 in at the lord's table: a conversation with 24 Comments

Welcome to #ATLT, At the Lord’s Table: A Conversation, a series of over 50 posts from varying authors about the beautiful, mangled Church. Look for at least two new posts every Monday through Saturday between January 25th and February 22nd. Join us in the conversation? See you in the comments.

“Here is the church,” I laced my fingers together and hid them between closed palms. “Here is the steeple,” I shot my pointer fingers up and touched the tips together. “Open the door and see all the people,” I swung apart my thumbs and wiggled my entwined fingers. And this last was always my favorite part, the funny church members all wobbly and stuck together.

My fingers have grown since those days, but I still like to use them to remind myself of what makes up the Church. For all the division and frustration, for all the disillusionment and hurt, for all the damage that by rights should have razed the building long ago, still here is the Church. And still my favorite part is the people.

I wrote once of needing audacious grace, the kind I first found in my Savior. And, emboldened by the security of His foundational grace, I dared enough to ask it of the people who called themselves His Body. I laid out a few of my best sins because they were just ugly enough to serve as warning: This was clearly one slutty, manipulative bitch. And then I made the big ask: Could I be a part of their lives in the most communal, personal ways? And the people in the Church said Yes.

I love all sorts of people, but the only ones I have ever known to hear a woman say, “I slept with your husband” and then invite her to dinner are the ones who have also found themselves needing and caught up securely in that first Audacious Grace.

That any one of us should have been so mysteriously, magnificently rescued seems miracle enough; it is almost too good to be true that there are others– who breathe the same air, who inhabit the same time, who walk right into each other– who have experienced the very same thing. And yet, the too-good is true: That same grace that has caught up all us wobbly-willed people has also entwined us.

So when I asked them to open the Church door, they rushed to fling it wide. They invited me in to pen my question marks, to sing my faltering tunes, to pass my dirty dishes, to help carry my babies and my burdens.

So here is the Church made of messes like me, and it’s no wonder it’s so tattered and broken. But I cannot despair: I open the door and see all the people, and the One to whom the steeple points has hid us between closed palms where we are all wobbly and stuck together.

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read the post before this one, here.

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Tamara Lunardo

Tamara is a collector of fine tattoos, an imbiber of cheap wine, and a singer of eclectic music. She works out her thoughts on life and faith at TamaraOutLoud.com, occasionally with adult language, frequently with attempted humor, and hopefully with God’s blessing. Editor of “What a Woman is Worth” through Civitas Press, she holds a BA in English and her five children, when they let her; she almost never holds her tongue.

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