Love itself is the prime spiritual discipline. All others, including Bible study and prayer, are good only insofar as they serve to empower, amplify, or inform love.
Pianists don’t cultivate their skill and musicianship by reading books on the history of piano music or by talking with composers, as enriching and obliquely helpful as that might be. They improve by playing piano.
Similarly, the way you get better and more consistent at loving is by trying to love.
Speaking harshly was one of Jesus’ love languages.
Become love plankton.
All of the above except for the Martha and Mary bit, the excerpt from Philippians, and the substitution-heavy quotation from John came to me last night on a walk I took up and down Balmoral Way by myself just after a similar walk Carla and I took in which I was grumpy and we discussed, seemingly to little good, how it is that I feel so frustrated with the kids sometimes and speak them accordingly. It was seemingly to little good because Carla took it as another opportunity to insist that I see a counselor. Perhaps more helpfully, she did say that she thinks I expect too much of the kids and out of the kids.
But Lord, You are a wonderful counselor Yourself, and you proved it yet again last night.
The fact is, I’ve been worried about Sullivan and Éa. I worry that our relationships don’t look like the kindred feeling I have with, say, Ethan. They’re not enthusiastic about the same things about which I’m enthusiastic—namely, You. They’re wrapped up in television shows, Minecraft, and carbohydrate-heavy foods. I’m worried I’m going to leave them without a spiritual legacy because I didn’t lead them correctly to You.
But what is it I really want of them? I want them to be loved and know it, both as an end in itself and that they may love You and others in turn. The only way to inculcate that is to quit wringing my hands over their performance and demonstrate the Love! Monkey see, monkey do! Right now, the only good they seem to know of me am to them is as a provider. They need to know it’s more than that: That I joyfully care about and care for them and caringly enjoy them. They’ll know where I get the Love if I love them. The greatest apologetic argument is a life lived abiding in Jesus.
I’ve already grown more gentle this morning as a result of Your input, and their response and responsiveness to me have already improved.
So don’t worry about them. Don’t worry about anything. Be gentle. Be patient. Don’t fret their salvation. Just love them. What kind of education and instruction is Jesus’? Think about that? How would Jesus treat Éa and Sullivan?
As for life more generally, I asked You whether I should abandon my scheduled approach to life. You said no, my structure is good. But I should just listen for Me all the while. Hold on loosely to your plans. Don’t be greedy or anxious about accomplishment or checking off boxes. Dismiss the oughts and act in grateful, joyful love only. Sullivan and Éa will feed on that easygoing, lighthearted life in Love, in Jesus.
My dubiousness about people using the names of the people they’re talking with, which Dale Carnegie suggests in his book as a key to winning friends and influencing people, is sound—times have changed since Carnegie’s book—except, huzzah, when you use the name in exclamations of thanksgiving, co-elation, or congratulation. In those contexts, it is pure simpatico, building the relationship 100%.
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.
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.
“[A] Christian sexual ethic is a process of transforming eros into agape.”
Love is hardly love if it is lazy.
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!
“…[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.
To love = to give a damn about (1) the good of and/or (2) the enjoyment of relationship with
My new definition of love: to devote oneself to the good, wellbeing, or flourishing of and the enjoyment of relationship with.
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.
I enjoyed today how although I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to bring anything to church, at the last minute as we approached our taking of the wine and bread, I thought of “What A Friend I’ve Found” by Delirious?, which I had just run through with Carla, the Rookes, and Ben last weekend on a whim. I need to remember not to worry so much. Just follow my whim. Especially with music making. I ought not make music simply because I have a voice for it. I ought to make music when it is in the service of love only. Is love the post hoc pretext that covers a selfish ambition for praise or usefulness? Or is love the actual, prompting reason I’m doing the singing? Let it always be the latter.
“God loved us while we were yet monsters.”
Baby, I need your lovin' Got to have all your lovin'
— The Four Tops
I woke up with these lines in my head yesterday morning. They were not accompanied by any assurance that they were from God. Perhaps I should stop noting the ones I’m not sure about, lest I give the impression that I’m suffering from severe confirmation bias.
Yet there is no reason to not make something good of this delivery from my subconscious mind: God wants all my loving. Actually, to be more precise, my first, most prophetic-sounding idea from this lyric was one of keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead, not frittering my attention on wasteful, lustful, unloving. It’s basically a reiteration of [1 Corinthians 16:14](1 Corinthians 16:14).
We are ready to send Everett and Oak home. But we’re not. I’m sure these are the typical feelings of a foster parent. Life is going to be different. Quieter. This evening without them because they’re with Mommy and Daddy makes that sure. But as Everett would surely reciprocate, “I will miss you, Everett.” And I will miss you, Oak. We still have three weeks with them, so let’s make them count.
We asked Éa and Sullivan today whether they’d like to foster again. Sullivan said, “I’d like a year.” And Éa said, “Yeah, in like, five thousand weeks.”
A home is fuller if you’re stretched for the sake of relationships. Let us dig in to more people. Let us “love [our] enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Then I will live without regret.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was I day I think—I hope—I turned a corner in my character. You see, since screening the finale of the second season of Gatiss & Moffatt’s Sherlock this past Saturday, entitled “The Reichenbach Fall” (and probably a good bit before then), I had been obsessing over the show: obsessing about its plot, obsessing about its characters, obsessing about its actors, and obsessing about its writers. I was obsessing about my decision to stop watching it because of my obsession.
I needed to be rescued from all this.
And it’s more than Sherlock: In recent months, I have spent far too much time and attention setting up operating systems, selecting an iPhone case, and other such minutiae. I prioritize trivialities. And it robs me of life (and steals from DiamondBack).
We have overcome perfectionism. We have overcome stoniness. We have overcome self-distraction at work. We have overcome religious doubt. (All of the above are still works in progress, but they are works well on their way with clear paths to completion.) Perhaps now we can take on obsessiveness and the resulting misprioritization.
Deliberation, yes: You do that about problems and decisions. Cogitation, yes: You do that about profundities. Obsession, no: You do that, by definition, with things you ought not to. And I know what it feels like.
If you’re going to obsess about anything, do it about giving yourself for the benefit of other people.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you we had our 72-year-old next-door neighbor Janet Donald over for leftover Stilson rotini dinner, homemade quick bread, a thirteen-year-old shiraz Janet had donated to us a month prior for Carla’s birthday, and some after-dinner Dixit at the kids’ prompting, all while piano jazz played on Spotify and the thermostat was set to a balmy 67°F.
I told her I love having her over.
Did I say it because I love the feeling of moral pride it gives me to know I have my aged next-door neighbor over for dinner and counter her as a friend? In part, yes. But I also said it because I really do like her.
“Now you together are the Messiah’s body” (1 Corinthians 12:27, KNT). In other words, I extrapolate, we are how Jesus acts on this earth.
How do good things in the ekklesia end up going bad? Often the road to corruption is paved with stones of well-intended pragmatism. Virtue is not always practical, nor profitable. Love is not pragmatic. There is no love column on a profit-loss statement or a balance sheet. Love cannot be analyzed. Love can be entered in to. Doing what is right does not always have an immediate practical outcome of benefit. When a spirit of pragmatism enters a community (especially regarding money) little incremental steps are taken choosing the practical and the profitable over the virtuous and honorable. Those little bricks of making pragmatism our God, pave the highway to corruption. Pragmatism wants to assure that a course of action turns out well for me/mine and ours. Love wants to make sure it turns out well for others, even if it costs me/us.
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). That’s the only faith worth having. And it’s the only faith I can have through some of this terrifically doubtful season. Specific religious practice is questionable. Faith expressed in love is not.
It’s nice to work in a place where it’s not weird when your colleagues close your call with “Love you.”
“Everywhere in the Bible you see God saying that his aim is his own glory, see love. For only this will satisfy our souls.”