Scott Stilson

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Become love plankton.

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What I really want in this instance, as George MacDonald taught me, isn’t the forgiveness for the consequences of my sins (e.g., the wrath of God) but freedom from my actual sins. I’d like to become the father that doesn’t snap at his son. I don’t want an imputed purity. I actually want to be, myself, pure.

— Richard Beck

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On the subject of the solo satisfaction of biological and psychological drives (e.g., eating, masturbating, sightseeing): As long as they are not harmful and they are undertaken with thanksgiving, they are done in love, and are thus good.

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“[A] Christian sexual ethic is a process of transforming eros into agape.”

– Richard Beck

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Love is hardly love if it is lazy.

My reflections on excerpts from A Grief Observed (1961) by C. S. Lewis

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The death of a spouse after a long and fulfilling marriage in quite a different thing. Perhaps I have never felt more closely the strength of God’s presence than I did during the months of my husband’s dying and after his death. It did not wipe away the grief. The death of a beloved is an amputation. But when two people marry, each one has to accept that one of them will die before the other (xii–xiii).

Such insightful and poetic words from Madeleine L’Engle. It is true: Either Carla or I will predecease the other, and that will feel like an amputation.

Reading A Grief Observed during my own grief made me understand that each experience of grief is unique (xiii).

I must remember that as I age and my friends’ spouses die.

Like Lewis, I, too, kept a journal, continuing a habit started when I was eight. It is all right to wallow in one’s journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in our journals we don’t take out on family and friends (xiv).

I appreciate her recognition that, as Carla has taught me, it is important to vent so that we don’t hurt those around us.

I am grateful, too, to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God with angry violence. This is part of healthy grief not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul’s growth (xvi).

Geez. Had I only known people were so comfortable with their own doubts about God and Jesus and the whole shebang when I was going through my throes of existential doubt!

And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? (5)

Warning! When Carla dies, still take your walks. Call people to hang out. Do your work. Unless you want to just die, too.

The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. (11)

Lewis is not outshone in poetry by his formidable foreword writer. I am certain Carla’s death will seem just like he describes. It will (dis)color everything.

But her voice is still vivid. The remembered voice—that can turn me at any moment into a whimpering child. (16)

Again, I suspect the same will be true of me when Carla dies.

‘Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? (27)

The poor Calvinist!

Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified Him. (28)

Wrong.

Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable. (28)

No, it’s not.

Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite [of God being good]? (29)

No.

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead. From the rational point of view, what new factor has H.’s death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned—I had warned myself—not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing I haven’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No, And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards (36–37).

Crucial, both for those who know they are doubting because of the problem of evil and for those who think they aren’t.

In which sense may it be a house of cards? Because the things I am believing are only a dream, our because I only dream that I believe them? (39)

That’s an important distinction of which I’d never thought.

They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal? (41)

An excellent one-liner. Ah, but it was Lazarus’ experience that brought us the Gospel according to “John”!

A sinful woman married to a sinful man; two of God’s patients, not yet cured. I know there are not only tears to be dried but stains to be scoured. The sword will be made brighter (42).

Who knew belief in purgatory existed among Protestants? Certainly not I. But now I do: Richard Beck, Jerry Walls, C.S. Lewis, Brad Jersak—heck, all the universalists, I suppose. Thinking of the afterlife makes so much more sense with a purgatorial hell.

What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never been to a dentist? 43

I love it when Lewis zings.

You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately; anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when think about our dead? (45)

I remember those October laps around the Holiday Inn in Orlando.

For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress, but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. :perhaps more. (47–48)

This is how I view Carla, and I told her so.

Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis in one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again. (52-53)

My, but does his man has a knack for finding the right metaphors to explain his thoughts! L’Engle and Lewis agree: Losing a spouse to death is an amputation.

The notes have been about myself, and about H., and about God. In that order. The order and the proportions exactly what they ought not have been. And I see that I have nowhere fallen into that mode of thinking about either which we call praising them. Yet that would have been best for me. (62)

God, You equipped me to not repeat Lewis’ mistake here. Thank You.

An incurable abstract intellect

Excuse me, Mr. Lewis. Did you call me?

To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images—sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? (66)

Sure seems like it.

And now that I come to think of it, there’s no practical problem before me at all. I know the two great commandments, and I’d better get on with them. (69–70)

Amen, preach it, Brother.

To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a ‘spiritual animal.’ To take a poor primate, a beast with never-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, ‘Now get on with it. Become a god’ (72)

Indeed. Thanks a bundle, God. No really, I mean it: It’s absurd and exactly what I want at the same time.

My overall takeaway: It scares me a little that I have read this and Dementia in the same year. Carla may very well predecease me, and I appear to be attempting to get ready for that contingency.

The main way to be ready: Remember to continue to live after she dies! But remember to grieve ferociously in order to do that!

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“…[w]ith humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves…” (Paul). This is a crucial verse for me if I’m going to bear the fruit of love. It’s this regard of others as more important than myself that is going to turn up my inner hearth of love for others. Without that phrase, my love risks being too mechanical, too principled. If I can honestly regard others as more important than myself, I will fulfill the second Great Commandment.

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To love = to give a damn about (1) the good of and/or (2) the enjoyment of relationship with

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My new definition of love: to devote oneself to the good, wellbeing, or flourishing of and the enjoyment of relationship with.

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In order for me to maximally productive at work, I have to be cutthroat with all non-work items. I have to forcefully box out distraction, daydreaming, and other (non-work) people and their agendas.

But that’s no way to live your home life!

Love in one’s home life means primarily the enjoyment of relationship with those around you and acting for others’ good by relating and enjoying and resting with them. Work is necessary in home life—and indeed, even for love’s sake it is necessary—but it isn’t primary. It serves the primary purpose of enjoyment. And besides, home life flows like water, it’s stochastic, it’s unpredictable, it’s got a bunch of other people and animals and neighbors and friends that can’t be controlled like one’s own attention can be controlled.

So I need to have two mindsets:

At home, I will not abandon my getting-things-done agendas, which are after all mostly built on love, but I will let the direct relational and enjoyment modes of love take precedence. I will go with the flow comprised of everybody else’s wishes and needs (and my own, for that matter—let’s not forget that rest and occasionally following one’s whim is important).

At work, since love in one’s job life is indeed primarily about productivity for the sake of the “family farm”—although not entirely (think of the joys of turning my attention 100% to others when they interrupt me!)—I will continue to hone that blade.

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“Everywhere in the Bible you see God saying that his aim is his own glory, see love. For only this will satisfy our souls.”

— John Piper

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I often put my hand over my heart when You and I go for strolls these days. I hope that means I love You, and not merely that I’ve adopted an affectation of loving You.

Deeds will tell, I suppose.

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Esprit d’escalier after a Spring-Creek-Park conversation about a friend’s experience with You, God, since a conference at Life Center back in February:

“Friend, I realize in retrospect that the reason for my muted reaction to your account of what God has done for you this past year was not jealousy or my own lack of similar experience: It was simply that what you were telling me was news Ethan has been sharing with me repeatedly since you encountered God so powerfully last February. I do remember rejoicing when I first heard the news. I praise God for it.

“It’s true that I don’t know what to say when speaking directly with someone describing an experience such as yours, because it’s true that I haven’t had much in the way of similar experience. But then, my heart is filled with peace and joy and light and has been—increasingly so—since my adolescence. Just because I’m not effervescent about Christ doesn’t mean I don’t love Him. I do always want to love Him with more of me, but I don’t need a powerful encounter to galvanize my love. Though to my limited understanding, it would be nice, for sure.

“On the subject of me finding it hard to get excited about the Gospel because I don’t understand it, perhaps an analogy will do: When you say Jesus showed His love for me when He allowed Himself to be executed by the Romans and Jews, I hear something akin to if Carla came to me and said, “Scott, I love you so much that I built an underground calliope that shoots chipmunks out of each pipe but only when you play in the key of B♭(my favorite key) so that when I want to see you and embrace, all I have to do is play a B♭ major chord to dispatch to chipmunks, who will run to tell you so.” If I don’t understand how you making an subterranean steam organ could mean ‘I love you,’ you won’t appreciate my love. If it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make heart. You can’t tell me to stop trying to understand it, I don’t think.”

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“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law” (Galatians 3:13a).

Jesus be like, “S’alright. I got this.” And boom, with his execution, fulfills the requirements of the Law once and for all so that we don’t have to worry about it.

No, really. Paul writes that He bought us off a lender who was on our backs. You don’t need to do anything to inherit eternal life. He paid your ticket.

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Brandon had us take a Five Love Languages (In The Workplace) test today. My primary language “for feeling appreciated in the work setting is by having others communicate their appreciation for him verbally…in addition, [I] actually [have] two secondary languages of appreciation. One way that he receives encouragement and is motivated is by spending quality time with those he values…an additional way that Scott receives encouragement and is motivated is by receiving gifts…Scott’s lowest language for feeling appreciated in the work setting is by having others help him with projects he is working on. As a result, attempts to motivate or encourage Scott by doing tasks for him will generally not be that effective.”

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Doubt has humbled me and made more sympathetic. I could also swear it has made me more patient and loving with my family.

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In the Clover Highlands during my prayer-walk today, I came away with this: The people in front of you at any given moment are the most interesting, fascinating people in the world. Certainly more interesting than myself. Act—and listen—accordingly.

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An unfinished verse about the problem of divine hiddenness

O, invisible God, whom I cannot see,
Please, please reveal Yourself to me.
I don’t understand what you gain by hiding,
Blah-biddy blah, biddy-blah biddy fighting.
But I know You are love, if you are anything all,
Blah-biddy blah, biddy-blah biddy fall. ✏️ 🎤 🎵

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A simple experiment in making friends (and thus a community): Let’s gather for a potluck dinner on the second and fourth Thursday evenings of each month.

Open to anyone living in Houserville, Bathgate Springs, Clover Highlands—anyone at all, really, but intended for folks for whom, say, Spring Creek Park is a walkable destination.

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured” (Kurt Vonnegut).

This write-up of mine describing the Houserville Social Club on the potluck sign-up sheet on SignUp Genius and the accompanying Vonnegut quote has taken on increasing value in my life recently. As if it really is my mission. Maybe it’s Robin Williams’ death and the admissions of depression that are being published everywhere in its wake that has helped galvanize it.

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After an evening with the Houserville Social Club that included a LifeFlight helicopter takeoff, new friends Janine & Kimberly joining us at the table, Wengyi signing up for the email list, a game of cups (frickets) played heartily with Carla, Lara, and the kids, then more dowel/disc/cup fun with just the kids, I find further peace in my current station. I am a:

The list above is enough of an identity and set of pursuits to satisfy this hungry-for-meaning soul. I need do no other “great” things. If I fulfill my roles above with all my might (the specific, mutable ones subject to Your redirection), I shall be happy, and I shall not blink on Judgment Day.

More importantly, I shall no longer be subject to judge-and-second-guess-myself day, which used to happen, like, every day of my life but now wanes in frequency until it shall soon disappear completely.

And as for my doubts and questions, whether You are a restrictivist, an inclusivist, a universalist, or even a religious figment, my life will be best lived if I live it as though You are completely real. My prayer is that my doubts have three effects: More sympathy, less dogma, especially toward my children, and more action, since faith-as-action is much more important than faith-as-specific-credence to Inclusivist Yahweh, and Restrictivist Yahweh seems to prefer action as well.

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I’ve written it before: I am going to live my ordinary life in an extraordinary way: Rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, giving thanks in all circumstances, in humility of mind regarding those around me as more important than myself, loving You with all my heart, mind, soul and strength in my quotidian. I guarantee the non-quotidian will follow from there.

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Hey, it was definitely hard, but I really enjoyed spending time with you this evening.

— Scott, to Carla

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[while listening to “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley]
Sullivan: What are “every little things”?
Carla: Just everything. Everything’s gonna be alright.
Sullivan: God. ‘Cos he makes badness into…into…love-ness. He’s a nice guy.