Censorship

Censorship. Every time I hear this word, something deep within me groans. Oh no, hear it comes again. It pits people against each other, invites judgment, kills creativity, and leaves artists afraid of the church. Censorship. It just sounds like the scrape of bars being wedged to cover a window.

The Christian faith is based on a grand narrative—a lovesick God rescuing his beautiful bride, a warrior king reclaiming surrendered territory. The story is epic, romantic, rings with the promise of a true happily ever after. But there are places in the story that are also ugly, gory, grotesque. We haven’t reached the happily ever after just yet. The bride—we’ve given our heart away, slept around, shed blood, drank ourselves into misery and certainly cast more than a few blasphemies toward heaven. But the church—we try to cover that up, refuse to acknowledge the way things were, the way our hearts can still tend to be.

We try to wipe the slate clean…but then we lose the story.

Without obstacles, story wouldn’t exist. The plot would flop. No one sighs with contentment when they close a book where the prince proposes and he and the princess marries, end of story, no complications, no opportunities for the prince to prove what his love for the princess can overcome. No one even reads those books. They don’t get published. They’re boring.

I’m not trying to justify sin, arguing that because it makes for an interesting story it suddenly becomes acceptable or even necessary. But I am saying that it’s part of our story, and it deserves to be told.

The ugliness of sin is ugly, but I find it makes the grace of God so much more breathtaking. And the ugliness is part of my story, part of our story. So when it comes to censorship, I think the church is so afraid that they miss the beauty and poignancy of their own story. I think that censorship doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.

I respect personal censorship; I have bridges I refuse to cross as well. But I also think that a swear word can carry a powerful message if used in the right context. I also think the power of that message will be lost if it is tossed around at every stubbed toe or overslept alarm. So, I think there is a balance.

A lot of what the church wants to censor, they probably have a right too. Besides being vulgar, it’s just bad art. Every time modern media wants to spice up a story they throw in a few more expletives and/or a sex scene and hope the movie or the book gets better. But they don’t craft the plot, hone the characterization, ask themselves if their characters really want to cuss or get laid or if they have something more unique to say. Most stories would be better without the jacked-up ratings.

However, there are moments when ugliness needs to be allowed to reveal itself for the sake of the story, because the world is broken and cries out for honesty, because it makes grace look more beautiful, more powerful. But the church is scared to allow the ugliness to speak because they think it is just part of the overwritten mass of moral smuck. I find the loss sad. And I find the tension difficult when I choose something edgy for my work with careful purposefulness—because it serves the story—and still find the church ready to shy away.

As an artist, I find it my job to challenge the church, to tilt her perspective, push her to find beauty in something outside of her Sunday morning box. But it’s also my job to respect her, to honor where she is at, to compromise and know what my audience can handle, to be gracious towards those who still don’t want to look.

I don’t really know where the lines should be drawn. I don’t want to be the one to draw them for everyone else, and I don’t want everyone else to try and draw them for me. I don’t think it should be about lines. It should be about story. And when we can’t see the narrative through all of the fences, we are missing a piece of the redemption process God wants us to experience. But I’m still learning, so these are just my thoughts.

Characters

You know that you are a writer when your characters start to come alive—sit across from you at your desk and tell you about their favorite foods, strike up a conversation with you you’re running, or snore next to you in the bed while you are trying to get to sleep.

Right now, I’ve living with this character named Doris, well not literally; if we were actual roommates we probably wouldn’t get along so great. She’s an older woman who lives across the field from the plant where the propane tank nearly blew up in Norfolk last December. She’s stubborn and her sense of humor makes me laugh. Her favorite vegetable is snap peas, and she spends hours cutting coupons out of the newspaper. But she’s also a mystery, haunted by a past that skews the way she looks at the world, and at God. I’m trying to get to know her, decipher her past, and ultimately correct her worldview. Call me crazy, but it’s my goal this semester.

All this to say, I’m definitely beginning to stray over into the ranks of writers who are so nerdishly consumed with their work that they start thinking of their characters as real people. And really who’s to say they aren’t? It's really a good sign. Now if only I would be so consumed as to produce complete pages every day…

Successful Artistry

The following are thoughts I’ve been pondering sparked from a discussion about Christianity and the arts with Lisa Neely and Amber Wood, during the annual writer’s festival at Lee University:

Conversations about calling tend to slip so easily into conversations about physical tasks and vocation, but calling is much more concerned with relationships than human undertakings. nAs a believer, I have a calling on three levels.

First and foremost, I am called to God, to draw near to His heart and encounter Him in relationship. Before my actions, He wants my heart staring intently into His.

Second, I am called to people, to serve the bride of Christ, the Church, and those God still desires to become His bride.

Third, I may be called to a vocation, to an avocation, to any number of tasks, burdens, or careers. Only on the third level does calling differ from individual to individual.

This is significant because when I consider success in my calling, the first levels of calling leave room for drastic differences between apparent worldly success and faith-filled success. First, calling means earthly success that gets in the way of relationship with God is not true success and smells of idolatry. Second, calling means success requires sacrificing for others—family, church, community—when there is a need more important than my personal artistic agenda. Yet third, calling means that God creates moments and places for my love of writing and the arts to bleed over into the first two areas of calling and bless the heart of God and His people.

Practically, what does that mean? It means that my words may never make their way into a New York Bestseller List, but they don’t have to in order to be significant. It means that I choose to write because I love to, because God gave me a gift for words and a joy for finding them, because if what I say affects just one person it might be enough. It means that I continue to hone my skills and choose to write with awareness of my community, of needs around me, and of those who have stories to be told but no voice with which to tell them.

It means I watch for the places where words and the burdens of the world overlap.

Rooted and Grounded in Love

“…and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Romans 5:5

God, I want to love you more. God, help me to love you more.

So often I find myself praying these words, confronted with the fickleness of my heart and my inability to offer my affections to God my Beloved as often or thoroughly as I think I should. I had a conversation with someone today regarding how this is really the wrong prayer to be praying. These words, though well-intended, are essentially about me, about my ability to love, my ability to offer something to God.

When Paul writes about the love of God filling the hearts of believers, he is not asking that believers learn to love God better within their own hearts, but that God’s perfect, powerful love would come to more fully dwell within His people. Paul is asking, hoping, praying, that God manifests His love so strongly, so fully to His people that we would not miss one drop—that if we do miss a drop it is because our shallow human hearts cannot find the capacity for the massive expanse of the love of God as it flows over the sides of our souls rather than because we did not ask to be filled.

My love for God will never transform my life. But God’s love for me—dwelling inside of me, flowing outward, saturating every cell of my body until it seeps out the pores—that is what will transform my heart. We love because He first loved us. My love for God will then increase as a by-product of His love, but it will be an added gift rather than an elusive desire attempted by my own strength or will.

The love of God is not a cheap phrase, a make-you-feel-better Christian cliché. The love of God is the most powerful force a human soul can or ever will encounter. I don’t understand that yet as much as I should. But I do understand that the degree to which I comprehend and acknowledge this truth, is the degree to which my life will be transformed from glory to glory.

What I want to pray is Father bring a fresh revelation of your love to the heart of your bride. I want to join with Paul as he prays for the church, “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breath and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19

India

I’m going to India next fall. I’ll be there for at least four months. The application process has been fraught with more snags and snafus than I anticipated, but its official now, or as official as it can be until I step onto a plane, and my heart has been humbled and awed by the process. God is so much bigger than any plans I could have made for myself, and it leaves me astonished by his grace and tender care of my heart when I look backwards and realize how he prods and crafts my days into a plan much wiser and more creative than any I could have made or envisioned for myself.

I don’t necessarily know why India. All I know is that I have watched this country transform so many lives around me. The dust of others’ travels has filtered back across the ocean to leave a trail upon my life, a trail I want to follow and see and taste and touch for myself. I don’t know why India, except that when I close my eyes and think about it I hear God laughing and I feel his pleasure over his children and my heart. I don’t know why India, except that she keeps trying to filter into the stories that I want to write, and so I go to listen and watch, taste and smell, touch and learn what I cannot yet sense. I believe that India has a lot she wants to tell me, secrets she wants to whisper in my ear, lessons that can filter their way through my heart to the pages of my stories and the lives of those around me. Except for these, I don’t know why India—just an inward feeling I don’t think I can find words for, at least not yet.

I don’t necessarily know what in India either. It’s hard to make plans for India, or so I’m told. I’m going to work in the slums, but I don’t know what that looks like for individual weeks or days or hours, and even if I did, it would probably change. But that’s okay. I’m preparing myself to be unprepared, to set aside everything I think I know about India and let her introduce me to herself on her terms. Until then, I like dwelling in the unknown.

Another lesson in humility

This week I have been struck with the realization that I cannot decide I want to do something and then walk into it assuming that I will be wanted. It’s humbling to find that people have reservations about your character, to be knocked off your feet again and reminded that you are far from what you need to be. I have been reading lately in 2 Corinthians. This morning I picked up my Bible to find these words:

“But he who boasts is to boast in the Lord. For it is not he who commends himself that is approved, but he whom the Lord commends.” 1 Corinthians 10:17-18

While I was reading this, it became so clear to me that I was walking into something I felt God had called me to do, but I that I was walking into it relying upon my own commendation. My self-confidence and pride seem so apparent to me now. I’ve spent some sweet time praying over this realization this morning. Despite the roadblock, I do not sense that the door I am trying to walk through has been fully closed yet. However, I now realize that it will not be by my strength, but by God’s grace that it will open. If He wants me to step into this new venture, He will make the way. He will commend me. I do not need to defend myself. And if I reach the goal, the process and arrival will have been made so much sweeter for this realization, for this reliance.

Airborne

I’ve decided tonight that faith is like riding an airplane. The facts show that flying is much safer than me putting my hand to a wheel and driving across country, however, it doesn’t always feel safer. There is a moment just before take off when the wheels grind and clack and I wonder if this might be the night that the plane doesn’t make it into the air, the night the mechanics or the pilot make a mistake. I feel that I would be safer if I were in control, even if that control were an illusion. But despite the noises and my doubts, the plane makes it. We become airborne.

Sometimes faith doesn’t feel safe. It hasn’t felt safe this past year as several of those dearest to me have been forced to fight against cancer, are still fighting now. It doesn’t feel safe to stare into a future with so many spaces left purposefully blank to leave room for God to work in the unknown. It doesn’t feel safe to watch those close to me stumble or cry out in pain in their journey towards God and know that my task is not to fix but to pray.

These things don’t feel safe, but somehow they are. I know they are safe because this weekend I looked into the eyes of a man who told me that God was reshaping his sense of well being and anchoring it firmly around God in the midst of the questions that cancer brings. I know because the only way I stay determined to face the future is through my dependency on the idea that life’s ultimate meaning is something bigger than what I can see. I know because I can’t control the lives of those I love, because the only one who is strong enough is God.

Right now I’m thousands of feet above the ground. When I try to analyze this fact it can be frightening—nothing but air separating me from a deathly fall to the earth. This is the moment when I need to trust, trust in those who know more than I do—the engineers who fashioned this plane, the mechanics who cleared it for take-off, the pilots who are driving it into the night sky, and God, the one who is blowing winds underneath the wings and holding the laws of physics together. My willingness to rely on faith is what will bring me home.