In which I have to talk to a youth group (eek)
So someone has asked me to visit a local youth group and share: why do I have faith?
My first reaction to both speaking without printed material in front of me ("sharing") and the words "youth group:" RUN. On my walk today, I came up with excuses about why I could not be there. And when I was done with that lame mental exercise, I began to think. How would I answer that question to a bunch of middle and high-schoolers?
Truth is, with our Mennonite Church background mixed with our Episcopal Church background, I usually try to let my deeds speak louder than words. I do not write "Christian stories." (I am a writer who is also a Christian. I am an uncomfortable Christian, and I prefer to say "I have faith" rather than "I'm a Christian.") I want people to be able to read my life like a book and see why--despite the hard things that happen, despite the sadness and the great inequity in this world, and despite my own grievous shortcomings--I have faith.
I have faith because I have seen and admired people whose lives were marked by courage and conviction. I'm not talking about the silly cardboard people with publicists and great salaries who talk a lot. I'm talking about people like Mother Theresa, Ghandi. I'm talking about people like my parents, my grandparents, people who quietly sacrifice power and gain for the chance to love and heal at real cost to themselves. I feel myself profoundly moved by such people.
And my faith has changed over the years. Life and doubt has whittled my faith down to a few essentials. But the essentials are enough, because the essentials are the solid core of my being: God is good. God loves us. God is bringing the Kingdom on this earth, but we are God's hands and feet. Jesus was God living among us, and he teaches us through his radical life that much of what the world teaches us is real--that the powerful win; the rich always prevail; we must fight to save our lives--was false, flimsy, and completely upside down. The concept of grace is central to me--that I receive this unconditional love and I pass it to others in the freedom of being forgiven--and this never runs out.
The essentials of my faith are relatively few, but they illuminate everything. Like Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, I have learned that God is in the world, and that makes the world good. God created all people, and that means no person is irredeemable, in this world or the next. God knows me. That is spectacular.
The essentials of my faith are enough to take my life, which sometimes seems blurry and random, and put all the events and people and questions into focus, as if someone has adjusted a lens or as if I've put on a pair of prescription glasses. In the few moments that I truly live by faith, what is important is bright and defined, and all the clutter is dim. My faith is enough to convince me that though many things and many people (including myself) are broken, in the end, all will be well. This is not an easy conclusion. This is a conclusion that takes much wrestling, that takes daily discipline to believe. And it takes work. "Faith" is not something I just arrived at. I am constantly journeying toward it.
Faith, by all accounts, is believing in the unseen. This is vital to me as a writer, a parent, a friend, and as a person who lives on this earth. George McDonald had these wonderful idea: a faith-filled imagination helps us see and experience reality, not fantasy. We suddenly are able to smell, to see, to feel, to sense, that all around us, God is in this world. That takes imagination. It's not an accident that we were given imaginations. All that is beautiful and wonderful and true--music, art, literature, kindness--that engages our imaginations and helps us see that Grace lives there.
Without faith in God's goodness, I despair. Like Puddleglum in The Silver Chair, locked under the tunnels in the witch's dim, enchanted world, I choose to say, stubbornly, There is a Real World, and there is light, and there is fresh air. And even if this grey world is really all there is, I choose to believe that, despite what my eyes tell me right now, that the Real World exists. Or like Simon Peter, when things were really bad, I find myself sighing, "Where else can I go? God, you have the words of life."
Finally (for now, because I feel as though I'm rambling), faith gives me a place in a bigger Story. I get to be part of something that is meaningful beyond myself. And my place--and your place-- however small it feels to us, is radically important to the Story. That sounds arrogant and cliché (like the line out of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever about no small parts) but the truth of it shocks our lives with meaning.
Today I needed to be reminded of all this. I'm not sure whether it will illuminate my day with sudden, God-given light--I am old enough to realize that this is not a given--but at least it is a good reminder to live my life, even these quiet moments, intentionally.
My first reaction to both speaking without printed material in front of me ("sharing") and the words "youth group:" RUN. On my walk today, I came up with excuses about why I could not be there. And when I was done with that lame mental exercise, I began to think. How would I answer that question to a bunch of middle and high-schoolers?
Truth is, with our Mennonite Church background mixed with our Episcopal Church background, I usually try to let my deeds speak louder than words. I do not write "Christian stories." (I am a writer who is also a Christian. I am an uncomfortable Christian, and I prefer to say "I have faith" rather than "I'm a Christian.") I want people to be able to read my life like a book and see why--despite the hard things that happen, despite the sadness and the great inequity in this world, and despite my own grievous shortcomings--I have faith.
I have faith because I have seen and admired people whose lives were marked by courage and conviction. I'm not talking about the silly cardboard people with publicists and great salaries who talk a lot. I'm talking about people like Mother Theresa, Ghandi. I'm talking about people like my parents, my grandparents, people who quietly sacrifice power and gain for the chance to love and heal at real cost to themselves. I feel myself profoundly moved by such people.
And my faith has changed over the years. Life and doubt has whittled my faith down to a few essentials. But the essentials are enough, because the essentials are the solid core of my being: God is good. God loves us. God is bringing the Kingdom on this earth, but we are God's hands and feet. Jesus was God living among us, and he teaches us through his radical life that much of what the world teaches us is real--that the powerful win; the rich always prevail; we must fight to save our lives--was false, flimsy, and completely upside down. The concept of grace is central to me--that I receive this unconditional love and I pass it to others in the freedom of being forgiven--and this never runs out.
The essentials of my faith are relatively few, but they illuminate everything. Like Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, I have learned that God is in the world, and that makes the world good. God created all people, and that means no person is irredeemable, in this world or the next. God knows me. That is spectacular.
The essentials of my faith are enough to take my life, which sometimes seems blurry and random, and put all the events and people and questions into focus, as if someone has adjusted a lens or as if I've put on a pair of prescription glasses. In the few moments that I truly live by faith, what is important is bright and defined, and all the clutter is dim. My faith is enough to convince me that though many things and many people (including myself) are broken, in the end, all will be well. This is not an easy conclusion. This is a conclusion that takes much wrestling, that takes daily discipline to believe. And it takes work. "Faith" is not something I just arrived at. I am constantly journeying toward it.
Faith, by all accounts, is believing in the unseen. This is vital to me as a writer, a parent, a friend, and as a person who lives on this earth. George McDonald had these wonderful idea: a faith-filled imagination helps us see and experience reality, not fantasy. We suddenly are able to smell, to see, to feel, to sense, that all around us, God is in this world. That takes imagination. It's not an accident that we were given imaginations. All that is beautiful and wonderful and true--music, art, literature, kindness--that engages our imaginations and helps us see that Grace lives there.
Without faith in God's goodness, I despair. Like Puddleglum in The Silver Chair, locked under the tunnels in the witch's dim, enchanted world, I choose to say, stubbornly, There is a Real World, and there is light, and there is fresh air. And even if this grey world is really all there is, I choose to believe that, despite what my eyes tell me right now, that the Real World exists. Or like Simon Peter, when things were really bad, I find myself sighing, "Where else can I go? God, you have the words of life."
Finally (for now, because I feel as though I'm rambling), faith gives me a place in a bigger Story. I get to be part of something that is meaningful beyond myself. And my place--and your place-- however small it feels to us, is radically important to the Story. That sounds arrogant and cliché (like the line out of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever about no small parts) but the truth of it shocks our lives with meaning.
Today I needed to be reminded of all this. I'm not sure whether it will illuminate my day with sudden, God-given light--I am old enough to realize that this is not a given--but at least it is a good reminder to live my life, even these quiet moments, intentionally.
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