Bring me to life

I was looking over some journal entries from high school the other day and I quipped in one that I was an extrovert stuck in an introvert's body. That got me thinking, what ever lead me to think I was an extrovert? It was a perhaps over simplistic definition: extroverts are those who are energized by being around people. Introverts will be drained around people and energized by solitude.

I find I do need relationship - it brings me to life,
yet small talk deadens me.

A good Bible Study makes me feel alive
but breakfast with many of the same people is exhausting.

Elaine's smile, sultry eyes and affirming word make life well up behind my eyelids
failing to contemplate her personhood, taking her for granted, these things drain life from my face, turning my color to black and white.

Hitting the town alone or visiting my friend Steve is a needful escape
but I don't indulge in it because I feel I must be with my family and being stuck at home deadens me.

Like, I love having a day off,
but spending my day stuck at home with the kids with out the car so Elaine can make us money deadens me.

Great coffee brings me life and communion with God (you've all seen it!)
but then even coffee is a fickle friend.

Good sexy jazz ushers me into the very throne room of God,
while, of course, pop-country can drive me out of my skin (or smooth jazz for that matter, I like it rough!).

A worship service with friends can give me a buzz
while the same worship service with strangers makes me jealous.

The disciplines are bright and shining friends
but routine and duty kills my soul

I guess all these things are a strange dance of motive, intention and delight. I don't know what I am. Am I extrovert or introvert? I find there is so much coffee I can't enjoy any more I wonder, do I even like coffee? Am I a rural pastor a big city bohemian? I guess we all could have lists of what brings us to life and what deadens us and they would all be different. The real answer to what I am is: unique. I am one delighted in by God and he has built some buttons in me that when pushed bring light to my eyes and spring to my step. How wonderful!

Manalive

Manalive by G.K. Chesterton

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Summary
“The glory of God is man fully alive” –St. Irenaeus

This seems to be the thesis Chesterton is playing with as he introduces us to Innocent Smith, a man alive. Innocent takes great lengths to break out from the seduction of routine to forget what it means to be alive. From traveling around the world to greater appreciate his family; to dispensing life from the barrel of a revolver, he finds ways to remind himself and others that they are alive and that life is beautiful. Contrasted with modernity, is Smith a lunatic? a criminal?

Strength
As Palmer suggests in The Active Life, the roll of contemplation-in-action is to disillusion. His principles fit Smith’s modus operandi. Smith’s action of breaking out wipes away the illusions that hide his appreciation for life. Whether he is accessing an ability to covet his own possessions or his own wife, he is learning to be fully alive. Chesterton paints in broad strokes and stark contrasts to show the disparity between full life and the modern man. For a society so fully dulled to living, even questioning whether non-existence might be preferable, the reality of life in the way of Innocent Smith seems unreal. How could everything be available in the sovereign state of Beacon House? How could all that glitters really be gold (59-60). Chesterton offers a glimpse at a deeper reality that Smith has come to recognize. As Irenaeus completes the quote above, “moreover man's life is the vision of God: if God's revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word's manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God” (Against Heresies 4, 20, 7: PG 7/1, 1037)

Weakness
Does Chesterton go too far? Does he, in pointing to another reality, diminish this present one and our need to live in it? What if there was no other reality after all what if it is all material? After attending what for us was an odd atheist funeral for my wife’s uncle I began to contemplate how I would live this reality if I did not believe in God. I found it very likely I would have lived much like uncle Tom, and perhaps also died at my own hands.

In Dostoevsky’s dark satire, Demons, the nihilist, Kirillov believes that if one could completely disregard the other reality and the fear of death it engenders in people, one could become God and that other God will cease to hold sway over people. A man like Kirillov stands as opposite witness to Professor Eames, he would lay down his life to prove it doesn’t matter. He gladly would have had Smith make his mark, only better yet he would have snatched the gun from his hand and done it himself.

“Man is afraid of death because he loves life, that is how I understand it,” I observed, “and that is what nature tells us.”

Here the Dostoevsky’s narrator agrees with Innocent Smith, but Kirillov disagrees.

“That is base, that is the whole deceit!” his eyes began to flash. “Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That’s how they’ve made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be” (Dostoevsky 115).

Synthesis

In the words of a Switchfoot song, “Souls aren’t built of stone.” We are more than material and I believe Smith has it right; there is a deeper reality that should direct our actions. Actions built out of a reality that goes unobserved by many will seem insane. It takes dramatic events like coming to terms with terminal illness to disillusion us.

On Fresh Air today I heard Dennis Potter say a very Smith-like thing of his impending death in 1994.

“The fact is that if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it!”

Application
In my own pursuit of the spiritual in my everyday life, I do well to heed the example of Innocent Smith. I must live in the present, enjoying the things around me: the plumb blossoms Dennis Potter learned to appreciate, or the stuff I already have. I do well to live aware of life and God blazoned in living color around me.

What a wonderful world

This morning as I was driving to our ministerial meeting I was full of the wonder of life. I said to God, "I am so glad you are in the world with me. You make it worth living," and other such romantic chit chat. Then my thoughts turned a little darker. How would I live with out him? What would my life be like if there was no God?

Today we went to a memorial service for Tom, Elaine's uncle. He committed suicide Thanksgiving day. He was an atheist. As I reflected on it, he really lived what he believed too. His life is how I would probably live if I didn't have my Divine Love.

Tom was a musician and a free spirit. He could pick up and go anywhere, love anyone, fulfill any apatite. He loved many women and kept them as friends when no longer lovers. He enjoyed his drugs and alcohol until two years ago, and why not? His friends at the memorial service were saddened by their loss of a truly unique and honest human being. They had only their memories to keep him alive.

In a way he is heroic. He looked death in the eyes and met it on his own terms. He had no fear of death, it was life that had become fearful. He lived his life well, just how I would hope to live without a God.

I say to God again, "Thank you for being here with me, for the grace of drawing me to you. Thank you for the grace to love you, the grace to stare life in the face with out fear. Thank you for the grace to gaze at death with hope. Please Lord, grant that grace to the wonderful bohemian friends that are mourning the loss of Tom. Amen"