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If you think much about it, at one time or another there are probably about a thousand reasons to be depressed. I don't mean real "depression," I just mean to be blue or gray or some other bland earth tone, to feel beat up or run down or tossed out. Things fall apart. They do. And while self-pity is always unbecoming, sometimes there are good reasons for feeling that the storms outside don't rank--no matter how ugly--with what's coming down within.
Maybe that's why Stanley Hauerwas's essay in First Things hit me the way it did when a friend sent it a couple nights ago. It's addressed--of all things--to an 18-year-old college student. That's not me. The finish line of more than forty years of college life isn't all that far down the road for me, most of those years, of course, on the other side of the desk or podium or powerpoint. At 18, I actually had hair.
Hauerwas quotes Robert Louis Wilkin when he begins:
What came up off the page was the first of those definitions: "inescapably ritualistic." What Hauerwas writes is an advice column, really, words of wisdom to some kid starting college. "Be faithful in worship," he says. "In America, going to college is one of those heavily mythologized events that everybody tells you will 'change your life,' which is probably at least half true. So don’t be foolish and imagine that you can take a vacation from church."
Or chapel.
Confession: I'm not all that faithful. Spiritual discipline-wise, I'm sadly out of shape. So yesterday I listened to Hauerwas as if I were 19. I went off to chapel, depressed--not clinically depressed, but lugging along enough murderous self-pity to make me miserable. I went because he's right, and I've known it forever, it seems; in this life, you've simply got to practice what you preach.
And I'm not hot on praise-and-worship music, but the sweet musical ensemble that offers us our fare is good and talented and pleasing. It wasn't the first number, wasn't the second either, as I remember. It was the last one: "The Love of God," an old favorite not in the least unfamiliar.
Why is it the great lessons in life are hardly ever all that new? Know what I mean? I could croon most of that old hymn right now, no lyrics in front of me. I didn't need Hauerwas to tell me that going to worship, even when it doesn't ring bells in your soul is good for you, like cod liver oil, holy cod liver oil. I know all of that. I'm ready to retire, for pete's sake. I've written devotional books most of my life, got another one coming soon to bookstores near you. I know the frickin' answers. I just don't learn 'em. Does that make sense?
Anyway, here's what did me in: second verse of "The Love of God," lyrics I didn't know. They're not in my memory.
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade. . .
I'm sitting there upstairs in the college chapel, telling myself I know where this poem is going. It's plain-and-simple love poetry of the divine genre, and what characterizes all love poetry is big-time overstatement--'till all the seas run dry, my dear. . ." I know what's going to happen with all this ink and all this writing and all these books. I know.
No matter. I tell myself that I can't help believe an entire chapel full of kids and profs and staff know the half of what I know because this hymn, this day, is meant directly and specifically for me, as if the Lord God almighty typed out the litany. The words jump off the screen. I'm not singing, I'm listening, because the Lord knows I'm someone who would, if given the chance, empty the sea of ink into telephone books of manuscripts. This is my song, and, dang it, I know very well where it's going.
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.
It's plain old love poetry, I tell myself, exaggeration, overstatement. I know all this. I know all this. I know all this. There's nothing new here, nothing new at all. My goodness, I'm a prof. I make my living being smart.
And here's the bottom line: "The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell."
I know that, but somehow the self-pitying sinner in me had never quite heard it so clearly before.
I'm no mystic. I never lost consciousness, never raised my hands, didn't hug the person next to me. I just got told the truth, even though it was ground I'd covered before.
These magic words appearing before me right now on the screen, my fingers dancing along the keys--they don't really rate, not when compared to, well, the love of God. That's the story, and he knows that I know it and he knows I just snub my nose and open a book or type out some words on a keyboard as if it weren't true, even though it is.
How is it we've got to be told, again and again and again?
Go to church, Hauerwas says to some nervous college freshman. I feel like a kid myself.
A Japanese man, a Christian, told me, years ago, that when he was a kid, locked up in some reformatory, some Christians came to minister to them weekly or monthly--I don't remember how often. He said he didn't remember a thing about what they spoke or preached, but he never forgot a lyric from a hymn they sang--"only believe, only believe." Those two words stayed in his mind as if nailed down tight.
Yesterday, in chapel, the meditation was fine. The preacher is a live wire whose been gifted with stage presence and knack for finding a way to enter each of our souls, our own private holy of holies. Kids love him, and not just kids either.
But honestly, I don't remember much about the sermon except that it was about forgiveness, and that he allowed for some special time for us individually, in silence, to go through our list of unfinished forgiveness business. And I remember thinking how I honestly don't have much of an account there, not that I'm a saint. I couldn't think of people I've never forgiven.
What I couldn't help thinking, however, was how block-headed I can be, how vain and proud, how arrogant, how sure I am that I know the whole damn truth. I'm a prof, you know. I know a lot of things. What I do is important. Let me show you my work.
But what I got told by the old hymn was no matter how many words I put down on this page this morning or tomorrow or the next day, no matter how many books I sell or readers I might wow, I'm forever away from draining the ocean.
The Lord almighty creates incredible plots nobody would ever believe if I'd write 'em. A good stiff case of the blues, an e-mail from a friend, an advice column from Stanley Hauerwas, and the lyrics of an old hymn whose roots, by the way, are--get ready for a shock--in the Koran.
When I walked out of that chapel, what I knew was that for some reason known only to God, I was supposed to be there. And I was.
_____________________________________________
You can read the wonderful Hauerwas article here. Or, if you'd like to hear a really lovely rendition of "The Love of God" by The Isaacs, try this.
Maybe that's why Stanley Hauerwas's essay in First Things hit me the way it did when a friend sent it a couple nights ago. It's addressed--of all things--to an 18-year-old college student. That's not me. The finish line of more than forty years of college life isn't all that far down the road for me, most of those years, of course, on the other side of the desk or podium or powerpoint. At 18, I actually had hair.
Hauerwas quotes Robert Louis Wilkin when he begins:
The Christian religion is inescapably ritualistic (one is received into the
Church by a solemn washing with water), uncompromisingly moral (‘be ye perfect
as your Father in heaven is perfect,’ said Jesus), and unapologetically
intellectual (be ready to give a ‘reason for the hope that is in you,’ in the
words of 1 Peter).
What came up off the page was the first of those definitions: "inescapably ritualistic." What Hauerwas writes is an advice column, really, words of wisdom to some kid starting college. "Be faithful in worship," he says. "In America, going to college is one of those heavily mythologized events that everybody tells you will 'change your life,' which is probably at least half true. So don’t be foolish and imagine that you can take a vacation from church."
Or chapel.
Confession: I'm not all that faithful. Spiritual discipline-wise, I'm sadly out of shape. So yesterday I listened to Hauerwas as if I were 19. I went off to chapel, depressed--not clinically depressed, but lugging along enough murderous self-pity to make me miserable. I went because he's right, and I've known it forever, it seems; in this life, you've simply got to practice what you preach.
And I'm not hot on praise-and-worship music, but the sweet musical ensemble that offers us our fare is good and talented and pleasing. It wasn't the first number, wasn't the second either, as I remember. It was the last one: "The Love of God," an old favorite not in the least unfamiliar.
Why is it the great lessons in life are hardly ever all that new? Know what I mean? I could croon most of that old hymn right now, no lyrics in front of me. I didn't need Hauerwas to tell me that going to worship, even when it doesn't ring bells in your soul is good for you, like cod liver oil, holy cod liver oil. I know all of that. I'm ready to retire, for pete's sake. I've written devotional books most of my life, got another one coming soon to bookstores near you. I know the frickin' answers. I just don't learn 'em. Does that make sense?
Anyway, here's what did me in: second verse of "The Love of God," lyrics I didn't know. They're not in my memory.
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade. . .
I'm sitting there upstairs in the college chapel, telling myself I know where this poem is going. It's plain-and-simple love poetry of the divine genre, and what characterizes all love poetry is big-time overstatement--'till all the seas run dry, my dear. . ." I know what's going to happen with all this ink and all this writing and all these books. I know.
No matter. I tell myself that I can't help believe an entire chapel full of kids and profs and staff know the half of what I know because this hymn, this day, is meant directly and specifically for me, as if the Lord God almighty typed out the litany. The words jump off the screen. I'm not singing, I'm listening, because the Lord knows I'm someone who would, if given the chance, empty the sea of ink into telephone books of manuscripts. This is my song, and, dang it, I know very well where it's going.
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.
It's plain old love poetry, I tell myself, exaggeration, overstatement. I know all this. I know all this. I know all this. There's nothing new here, nothing new at all. My goodness, I'm a prof. I make my living being smart.
And here's the bottom line: "The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell."
I know that, but somehow the self-pitying sinner in me had never quite heard it so clearly before.
I'm no mystic. I never lost consciousness, never raised my hands, didn't hug the person next to me. I just got told the truth, even though it was ground I'd covered before.
These magic words appearing before me right now on the screen, my fingers dancing along the keys--they don't really rate, not when compared to, well, the love of God. That's the story, and he knows that I know it and he knows I just snub my nose and open a book or type out some words on a keyboard as if it weren't true, even though it is.
How is it we've got to be told, again and again and again?
Go to church, Hauerwas says to some nervous college freshman. I feel like a kid myself.
A Japanese man, a Christian, told me, years ago, that when he was a kid, locked up in some reformatory, some Christians came to minister to them weekly or monthly--I don't remember how often. He said he didn't remember a thing about what they spoke or preached, but he never forgot a lyric from a hymn they sang--"only believe, only believe." Those two words stayed in his mind as if nailed down tight.
Yesterday, in chapel, the meditation was fine. The preacher is a live wire whose been gifted with stage presence and knack for finding a way to enter each of our souls, our own private holy of holies. Kids love him, and not just kids either.
But honestly, I don't remember much about the sermon except that it was about forgiveness, and that he allowed for some special time for us individually, in silence, to go through our list of unfinished forgiveness business. And I remember thinking how I honestly don't have much of an account there, not that I'm a saint. I couldn't think of people I've never forgiven.
What I couldn't help thinking, however, was how block-headed I can be, how vain and proud, how arrogant, how sure I am that I know the whole damn truth. I'm a prof, you know. I know a lot of things. What I do is important. Let me show you my work.
But what I got told by the old hymn was no matter how many words I put down on this page this morning or tomorrow or the next day, no matter how many books I sell or readers I might wow, I'm forever away from draining the ocean.
The Lord almighty creates incredible plots nobody would ever believe if I'd write 'em. A good stiff case of the blues, an e-mail from a friend, an advice column from Stanley Hauerwas, and the lyrics of an old hymn whose roots, by the way, are--get ready for a shock--in the Koran.
When I walked out of that chapel, what I knew was that for some reason known only to God, I was supposed to be there. And I was.
_____________________________________________
You can read the wonderful Hauerwas article here. Or, if you'd like to hear a really lovely rendition of "The Love of God" by The Isaacs, try this.
1 comment:
Thanks for this. I'll have to pull the shrink wrap off this month's issue of FT and start reading.
And that photo is lovely, by the way.
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