I was digging through some boxes of old stuff today- i found some amazing pieces of correspondence- letter i had gotten from and written to a woman i dated, letters from old friends, hopes for ministry, accounts of spiritual warfare, postcards from missionary friends around the world, the letter i wrote to my friend David the night before i really gave my life to Ch_t with his helpful explanatory notes written on it, photos from my freshman year in college (i looked like such a dork then- maybe i can blame it on mid-90's fashion), linguistics notes, handouts from previous Exodus conferences, etc.... That is a great thing to do now and then. In addition to feeling a little shocked at how closely i was once walking with the Sp_t compared to now, and the fire of the passion of my heart for Ch_t, i unearthed two poems i had written, presented below.

I don't write poems very often, and the first one is actually a song. Every once in a while inspiration will hit me. You can get a pretty good idea of my heart i think in them. (you can tell I'm influenced by John Greenleaf Whittier)

Last night i went for a hike on the Platte Plains Trail, a 5km hike, which dead-ends on a deserted beach on Platte Bay, the wide sweep of the bay, with the views of the several hundred foot high Sleeping Bear Dunes and Empire Bluffs about 10 miles to the right, and Platte River Point and Point Betsie 9 miles to the right, a gorgeous setting sun into clear water with a flawless sandy bottom.

Gd knew what he was doing when he made northern michigan

Enjoy the poems if thats your thing

Snow

The winter snows
Its drifting flows
Engulf my way
Surround my sight
With pale cold day
And crippled light.
I’m all alone
And slowly shown
The gorgeous show
That stills the wood,
And far below
Ablaze with snow,
The silent and forgotten road.


The world froze
As Boreas blows
An aching drone.
Each trunk stands barren
Like a bone.
The living cold
Like Lethe’s flow
Makes time feel old
And long ago.
The tremulous and sighing trees,
The world brought down to its knees
In deference to this constant foe.

The hard earth knows what winter brings
And biding the concealing snow,
It dreams of coming golden springs.

The river’s stopped,
Its ledges topped
With drifts of white
And icy sheets.
And in the vacant winter light
In tempo with the coming night
The heart of winter’s stillness beats.
Night’s firm regime,
Pale twilights beam,
A cold owl call,
A stony pond,
No warmth at all
Or light beyond.
This lovely world
Remains my home.
The crystal, dazzling, starry dome
The sky that oversees it all,
The north wind’s groaning, plaintive, call
A beauty all its own, unfurled.

Northland Psalm
by me Oct 1999

From the big lake comes the sighing
Of a chill surrounding breeze
And the echoes of it dying
Lost in far dune-crowning trees

Now the gulls have ceased their crying
And we pause a while in ease
‘Neath the winter-friend Orion
And the dazzling Pleiades

In the night sky we can find them,
On this autumn night they shine
Who can bind them or untie them?*
Every one of them is thine

In the vastness, low and hovering
Barely floating, clean and pure
Hangs the waxing moon uncovering
Tranquil shadows on the shore

As the waves are gently breaking
Liquid whispers, big lake heaving,
Rocking cedars, pensive, quaking
Their voice into the nighthymn weaving

In the lake gleam bits of starlight
And the moon slows in its mirror
On the dunes, diffused and soft-white
Moonlight finds us awestruck here

What a wonder lies before us!
All around His heartbeat beating
Who are we to join the chorus?
All our works are dim and fleeting

Hear Him love us with each wavebreak
On the beach spread out below us
In each moment, feel His heartbreak
Drink His love and let Him know us

On each ghost tree see Him dying
In the dunegrass hear Him calling
Once defeated, watch Him trying
To deliver us from falling

In the Passage**, almost hiding
Stands a beacon, in its role
With its lonely pulsing guiding
Mournful freighters through the shoal

High upon the bluff we feal Him
In this silence hear Him roar
Grass and sand and waves reveal Him
As no sermon has before

Though the wavesong bids us linger
And the starry skies entreat,
Though in bluffs we see His finger,
Though the lake-bourne airs are sweet,
Though the steady breeze restores us,
Though the moonlight makes us yearn,
Though His father-love reigns o’er us,
We must leave, though to return.

As we go, not seen before, a glimpse catch where lake meets sky
Low and dim glows an aurora; now and then its streamers fly
Pale and green and shifting slowly, thinking of it, I remember
What a night so still and holy on a dunetop in September.

*A quote from the book of Job
** The Manitou Passage in Lake Michigan contains several islands and dangerous shoals along the main shipping route for freighters

ahh.... Northern Michigan... it is a beautiful place to live- noone can argue with that

Follow your heart.... not

At LCC where i was just teaching, there was a class for first year students called LIFE group. basically it was to practice English writing while writing about less formal topics. One them that i read over and over in my life group journals was "you just have to follow your heart, and then you'll be happy :) "

Reading this statement always brought a strong reaction- the kind you get when you see an overly sappy commercial, or hear a Miss America candidate say "I am going to bring about world peace, can't we all just get along?".... this statement is so thrown around in our culture that people don't realize it has absolutely no meaning whatsoever, nor any power to give any meaning to one life...

You see the heart is often our worst enemy. "Following your heart" most often means do whatever i want to do, regardless of the consequences to others or myself, and no reason to feel guilty- my heart made me do it. Jeremiah 17:9 says "The heart is deceiptful above all other things- who can trust it?". The heart, the metaphorical seat of our emotional passions and desires gets us into trouble more often than not. I find myself often engaged in a war against my heart, which more than any other part of my self (mind, body, spirit) seems determined to draw me away from Gd's life-giving plan for me, and his fullness of life.

When we follow our heart, pastors run away with their secretaries, people cheat on each other, people sleep with each other before they are committed, people buy huge things they don't need, people seek revenge, people hold grudges, people lash out, people become emotionally dependent or enmeshed, people kill steal and murder, people view themselves as better than others, people envy and judge.

Gd has given us the power to NOT follow our heart, which leads us down a dangerous road. He has given us a mind that warns us that our heart is unreliable, and a spirit which holds us back from making the dangerous leaps that the heart would demand from us.

And even happiness itself is ephemeral at best- happiness is conditional, a pure cocktail of chemicals, something that evaporates as soon as the conditions which induced those chemicals change. So many people seek happiness as an end. When truly happiness should be seen as the occasional side effect of joy. Give me X'n Joy anyday over happiness. Joy is something that is unconditional, that is experienced equally at a funeral as at a wedding, in prison as in freedom, joy can meet and incorporate sadness, grief, confusion, frustration, and come out on top. Joy is the unchanging hope that we have in a Gd who is beyond us, the Great Author of our Story, who has a plan to grow us and make us more like Him and will never abandon us.

I wan't to conclude with some sweet lyrics from my all-time hero, Don Chaffer of Waterdeep

I believe the heart's a theatre

And that the actors on its stage

Are playing dreams, but they're impostors

and the devil pays their wage...

I believe the passions of that drama

that we're certain is for real

is a diversion for our senses

while the director(Satan) comes to steal

Ever since i was a little kid i didn't want to run away

But it scared me half to death to think that I might have to stay

I've had a hundred scarecrow certainties

built a wooden drawbridge for my brain

But it all comes down, when i see your(Js') face against the windowpane

Liberal

One of the things i have noticed on my return to the US is the old conservative-liberal debate, which i think is really a false dilemma. Everyone is quick to try to label each other "conservative" or "liberal", but really there are so many different dimensions to which these things can apply. There are matters of fiscal policy, foreign policy, social policy, environmental policy, moral issues, etc.. and it seems sad if most people just dogmatially choose only one end of the spectrum in all these matters which are very different.

The thing that is hardest, is that when you talk to Xns, or listen to n radio, the "liberals" are the enemy.

Liberal means "free"... I don't know when American ns forgot this message, but Js says that he came to set us free, he said that all things are permissible but not beneficial. Evng Xns should be the most "liberal" people of all, fully embracing their freedom in Ch_t, not trying through manipulating or legalism to keep people in bondage. The New Testament is very clear that adherence to the law has no power to change a person or give him the strength to resist sin.

It is a sad day when evnglcl Xns have allowed themselves to become on "enemy terms" with the word that means "freedom". Don't you think people already see the church as just a bunch of rules, that they could never adhere to? Evngcls need to be liberating and preach the message that one is truly "liberal" in Ch_t, not bound by traditions and legalism, but free to live in one's calling. If the world saw Xns celebrating our freedom, maybe they would be more drawn to Js

The Loon is my favorite bird

When missionaries first came to Michigan, they were able to get spiritual breakthrough among the Ojibwa by comparing Js to the loon (Maang) in the Ojibwa myth about the creation of man. Basically Gd (Gzhemnidoo) saw that there was nothing in man that was appealing or attractive to him, and he cast man into the depths of lake superior (Gzhegaami). The loon however, deepest of divers, swam down to the bottom and breathed life into the man. Again and again the loon dove, and eventually the man rose back to the surface, lungs inflated with air. Because of the loons sacrifice, Gd restored man to life. Loons are incredibly faithful birds, mate for life, and take excellent care of their chicks.

Last night i was walking through the forest, and fighting against my heart. If you have never heard a loon cry, there is no way to explain it- the haunting call full of sadness, but always seeming to end with a note of hope. The bird was voicing my heart's prayer. Js is reminding me in this time, that like the man in the Ojibwa myth, i am completely hopeless on my own power. So much of what i try to do- my ministry at LCC, my fight to try to stay pure, my fight to believe that Js himself is sufficient for me- is done out of my own strength and power. But I am realizing that as I try to minster and live and breathe out of my own strength, that i can do nothing but sink downward downward into the icy depths of the great lake. So much of what i do is to impress other people, and my battle towards holiness is fueled more often by a desire to not disappoint others, out of a fear of what people would think of me if they knew of my sin, than out of a desire to not grieve the Js who loves me and saved me and gave evertyhing for me. I care more about what people think of my sin, than what Js thinks of my sin, and i am tired of that.

A very trusted brother spoke the truth to me last night-- he said that to have been dissapointed in yourself means that you trusted in self. Self can do nothing (Jn 15- read it from Js' lips) I apologize that i have trusted in self. To those of you at LCC i ask forgiveness that i have been ministering their out of my own flesh, my own wisdom, my own understanding, rather than that of Gd.

Js is breaking me apart right now, and grinding me up.... he is wrestling me, and he is slowly pinning me to the floor, getting me into a hold that i cannot get out of, no matter how hard i struggle (not unlike what my roomate Janis does to me when we wrestled in the evenings :) ). But being pinned to the ground by Him is so much better than not touching him at all... i havent felt this close to christ in a long time- to feel him pressing against me, pushing me, revealing all of my weaknesses and how vulnerable i am and how my own flesh will never avail me in this fight-- i will take this minute-by-minute fight over calloused and cynical distant Xnity anyday. I am thankful that Js is throwing at me more than i feel like i can handle, because it builds and fuels my relationship with Him, and after all, the biggest Xn cliche of all, yet it is so true....

Js doesnt want my rightwousness, he wants me. Js-following is not a religion but a relationship. He is commited to my growth, not my comfort.

And with most of who i am, i can say I thank Him for it.

I thank you that as i sank into the dark depths, Js you dove into the water and breathed life into my lifeless lungs. I thank you that because of your act of sacrifice, i can be presented before god again, and stand unafraid, even in the middle of so much doubt and turmoil...