Tues Jan. 3 - Resolution Revolution (The Frames)

I want my life to make more sense,
I want my life to make amends,
I want my life to make more sense to me.
                  - The Frames


I'm not a New Year's "resolver."  I have never made a resolution to do something after the new year, similar to how I have only a very few times "given up" anything for Lent.  It's not that I have anything against the original concept of these traditions; it's just that their everyday forms generally fail to inspire me.  For instance, how much does giving up chocolate desserts for forty days really inspire me to think about my life or Christ's sufferings?  Not that much, really.

It's not that I can't imagine a possible scenario where giving up something small for Lent could help me focus or practice self-discipline, or how a New Year's Resolution could inspire me to new depths of self-actualization and happiness... it just also seems a little unlikely.

What would it look like if our resolutions had a revolution (literally turned around) to become something that was a little less about ourselves and reached out to encompass a community, a family, a world?

Sure, let's still go to the gym, but also let's think about the mark we leave on the lives of others, how our acts create waves that we can't even see.  Let's think about how we're making sense of our lives, how we are making amends, how we rightly choose to stay and fight or choose to find a fresh road forward...

Pavement Tune by The Frames (lyrics HERE)

Turns out, this ties right back into Christmas.  In the usual December flurry of "Does the 'Christ' Still Matter in Christmas?" articles, my favorite was one in the Huffington Post that reminded us that 'the greatest attack on Christmas has come from within,' from Christians whose actions so little resembled the teachings of Christ.

It is galvanizing to remember that perhaps my resolutions might take a different form because of Christmas: one of honoring the baby born in Bethlehem and the man he grew to be by starting anew the revolution in my own life - the turning again towards the difficult task of trying to live with more grace and less judgement, with more understanding and less ignorance, with more compassion and and less need for control.

Making all things new is ultimately a process of grace through God's help, but it is also a process of time and desire -- and practice.  We must want our actions to be transformed or we make God's work infinitely harder.  So it begs the question: how are our resolutions at the new year, at the mid-year, and elsewhere opening us daily to this transformation both personally and communally?

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

                          - 2 Cor 3: 18

May the work of the Spirit continue to be seen through even our small acts of courage, grace and peace in this coming year.

                                            - Anna

Thurs Dec 16 - How to Be Good (The Swell Season)

"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it in practice.  And the God of peace will be with you." 
        - Philippians 4: 8-9


The first time I heard Don't Want to Know, I wasn't sure I liked it. I heard the lines: 'I don't want to know about evil / Only want to know about love --' and thought: well, that's nice, but good luck to ya'.  Then there were the verses which are half honest soul-searching and half praying for apocalypse... which all added up to an uncomfortable mix.  But then it began to dawn on me: this is a song about living in-between.  It's about waiting for destruction and hoping for reprieve, it's about knowing our falleness and seeking scraps of grace.  It's about how we sometimes feel about things, rather than what we say about them.

So on the one hand, this is a sad, depressing song: caught between heaven and the grime of the world, we dream about purity, about knowing only of love. Amidst our longings and our fears, we pray for destruction to release us from the tension of living with our doubts.  These are the things we think when the "good" church people aren't looking, when there's no one to check our obsessive dreams and our depressive thoughts.

On the other hand, this is a song about hope and defiance: Living in-between we may sometimes have nightmares of the future, but still we hold on to what we can do: which is work bit by bit to focus on what is beautiful, real and good; to transform ourselves from inside out; to hope that by re-forming ourselves we can come to know Love more fully. This is no abstract "pure" concept of love divorced from people and relationship, but a love that lives in the dirt and mess of things as-they-are, that loves God in the midst of questions as-they-stand, and believes in a grace that can snap us from the hypnosis of our depressive obsessions. This is a search for goodness that operates out of a confession of faith and trust in God ('Only want to know about love') but which recognizes that in earthly life our goodness stems not from purity but from acknowledging our brokenness and teaching ourselves the contours of love and grace that help us onward...

Don't Want to Know (John Martyn) feat. The Swell Season (lyrics HERE) 

Sometimes it gets so hard for me to listen, / so hard for me to use my eyes...

                                             - (John Martyn)

In these Advent days, how are we listening for this theme in our own lives?  How are we re-forming our lives to make a space for a God who comes into the grime and confusion, the depression and the doubts and shows us that in the end Love knows us first?  How are we reminding ourselves that being "good" isn't about being 100% perfectly tuned to love's key, but is about seeking the strain of its melody and remembering always that our goodness grows from the root of God's love, nurtured by our actions and hopes...

"...if I could have one wish it would be that we would reconsider how we conceptualize being a good person, and keep in mind that we are not good despite our imperfections. It is the connection we maintain with our imperfections that allows us to be good. Our connection with our personal and common imperfections, being mindful of those personal and common imperfections is what allows us to be good to each other and be good to ourselves."  

- Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine at TED(x) Hampshire College

May we keep hold of Love which is not a purity that burns us clean, but Love which comes gently to our doubt, our brokenness, our dreams of living better, in the form of a child.

                                       - Anna