Beating Around... Realistic vs. Religious

In an effort to keep my writing up consistently, I am forcing myself to sit down and right about a topic that requires few scripture verses (my bible is across the table which would mean that I would have to get up) but has been on my heart for a few years. As our culture continues to move away from the love of a happy ending, we have begun to believe that our reality is what we see (and what we see is often sad). The monotony of daily life, the disappointment of culture’s broken promises, and the illusion of the American dream leaves many of us unable to think for a moment that maybe what we see around us is only a piece of the puzzle and if we refuse to acknowledge the rest, we could miss what our lives should be.

It all started a couple of years ago when I was sitting at the pool with some friends and family members. I had just decided to join the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, FOCUS, as a missionary who would go on campus to bring Jesus to students and students to Jesus. As I was talking about my new job, I was aware that my audience was 100% non-religious. They had maybe grown up going to catechism but that was the extent.  As I was describing my new job, one of the women (whom I really like) made the passing comment, “ I think I am just way to realistic for all of that stuff,” and continued to joke with me and sip on her beachy beverage.

WO! It was one of those delayed insults that land you in therapy years later. In one sly passing phrase, I was told that I just changed my entire life around because I am Looney tune! I was not offended and in no way want this to be a rant post. But I would like to explore what it means to be realistic. I have thought very deeply about this moment for quite some time and decided that I would no longer label myself “ religious”. I am a “realist” and this is why.

In order for someone to be completely realistic, one must acknowledge the existence of all aspects of reality and give each aspect the proper priority. For example, I can acknowledge all aspects of my living room but if I treat my cat as though he is more important than my husband and I treat my husband is if he is my cat (we don’t have a cat), then I am not acting within reality. Same scenario, but this time I simply refuse to acknowledge the presence of my husband in the room, I am still not being completely realistic because realistically, he is there.

So here is the problem, we as a culture acknowledge the here and now readily and often give priority to what materialistic good is in front of us. Priority can be given to materialistic things but it can also be the dating scene, getting a job, becoming successful etc... We are ruled by the tangibles and intangibles that surround us.

BUT! If God is real and I choose not to acknowledge His existence simply because it seems wrong or that lifestyle seems hard, I cannot claim to be realistic or practical. I am not acknowledging something that is exists. In the same sense, if I acknowledge that God is real but do not give Him proper priority, I cannot live in right reality. Created things can never be more significant that the Creator Himself and if I do not acknowledge that fully (by where I put my worship and spend my time) I cannot call myself realistic.

It is true that some of us live in the Truth and some of us do not. Our grandparents would be appalled at the idea that no one can ever be wrong. Either Christianity is true or it is false. If it is true then in order to live in full Truth, I must acknowledge the existence of a God who loves us and a Jesus who became one of us accompanied by the Spirit of Truth. I would then believe in the eternal Church with all of its saints and that there was a roadmap to a virtuous life provided to us with pain and suffering and joy and glory. If this is true, then all who believe and give the Lord the ultimate priority in their lives are actually the realists because they are living in full reality, not the partial kind that obscures our view of eternity and falsely removes consequence from bad behavior (consequences of actions exist no matter what we believe about them).

If this is not true, I am not a realist. I am simply a religious and I need to quit my job immediately for more money and less humility.

BUT! It is true that we will know a tree by its fruit and I, in my airy fairy journey with God, have seen the tangible joy in the eyes of those who acknowledge the existence and sovereignty of God. I know many people who forego money, sex, and power, our culture’s golden calves, for a life of poverty, celibacy and service. It makes no sense and yet they contain and in their eyes a light that is brighter and more filling than those who who are too realistic for those crazy myths like God and religion.

Matt Fradd said that Sin makes us boring; it is the Saints who were fully alive!

It is the Saint who is the realist. Become and you will embrace the fullness of Truth and the realist of reality.

Beating Around... The Characters of the Passion and American Christianity

 Good morning! What a wonderful morning it is. Last night I attended my very first Seder meal to celebrate the Jewish Passover. I learned two things. First, I learned that the prayers of the Passover meal are beautiful. They give so much glory to God and remain relevant to the 21^st century American. Example, we dip our herbs into salt water to represent the bitterness of a life led by materialism. I also learned that a devout Jew would have most likely been horrified at our poor attempt to honor their tradition. To our Jewish brethren, we tried hard but in good spirit could pronounce few words correctly, stumbled through the traditions with jokes and sang the Great Hallel to the tune of “Eagles Wings”. We are sorry… but we still seek unity during this our ever so sacred Catholic Super bowl aka the Easter Triduum.

As I wake up on Good Friday however, and consider the passion of our Lord, I am finding myself continually meditating on the character of Pontius Pilot contrasted by the character of Simon of Cyrene. These two individuals play a small role in the gospels and yet are central examples of the choices we have as we encounter Jesus Christ. I do not want to vilify Pilate, I sympathize with him, but I do want to point out why his response to Jesus struck me so deeply.

In case you are unfamiliar with the story of Jesus’ journey to the cross, it all started with the betrayal of His apostle Judas who handed Him over to the authorities for 30 pieces of silver. Jesus was then questioned by the Jewish law (the Sanhedrin) and handed over to the Romans where he was questioned again and eventually handed back to the Jews to be scourged, mocked and eventually crucified.

So now that you are caught up, enter scene. Jesus is standing before Pontius Pilate and asks him “ Are You the King of the Jews.” Jesus answers, “ You say so” (I have always found this to be extremely cryptic of Jesus but I guess if you are the Son of God you do what you want). While Pilate is questioning Jesus, his wife sends him a message telling him to having nothing to do with this man, for she saw in her dreams that he is innocent. Pilate questions Jesus again and then says, “ Take Him and crucify Him, for I find no fault in Him.

Here is the crux of the matter. Pilate KNEW of Jesus’ innocence. He KNEW that there was something about Him but he did not allow that knowledge to affect his life or decisions. He washed his hands, claimed himself innocent of Jesus’ blood and went on with his comfortable life while Jesus headed down the painful road to Calvary.

Is this not American Christianity?!?!?! We KNOW that there is something about Jesus. We will even say things like  “ Oh yeah, I believe,” or “ I think that Jesus is real” but it stops there, we don’t let it affect us. If half of us allowed that belief to affect our decisions, our culture would cease to be ruled by emptiness, loneliness and utilitarian relationship and be characterized virtue, integrity and selflessness. The King should affect us, His thoughts, His ideas; His laws should shape our lives. It would have been absurd in the middle ages for a member of the Feudal system to say that they believe in the King and yet divorce that for the decisions they made. It would have actually resulted in death for the servant. The King made the decisions and the people of his manner lived accordingly. Pilate’s mistake was not denying Jesus, for he did not deny what he knew of him, he just did nothing about it.

Simone of Cyrene on the other hand, did not know much of Jesus but allowed Him to invade his life. Imagine being a foreigner who is watching this crucifixion take place and getting pulled into it! I would have at least peed my pants! And yet, regardless of motive, he literally entered the Passion of Jesus and relieved him of some of his pain. Simone took on Jesus pain for a moment. His decision to let Jesus affect his decisions allowed him to give relief to the Son of God. What an amazing opportunity! Completely inconvenient but worth it! How incredible that our decisions to let Jesus Christ change the way we do things to for His sake can actually bring Him relief and give us a small but shining role in the salvation of the world!

Both men made decisions that left a mark on eternity. For I am writing about them two thousands years later and their characters are played by thousands of young children every year as they reenact the Stations of the Cross. Most of us know who Jesus is, we know of His innocence and many of us believe that He is God. The question stands. Will we allow that knowledge to bring us into an inconvenient encounter with Jesus that affects our lives for eternity or will we acknowledge the truth and leave it at that?

Beating Around...What You Are Already Accomplishing (as illustrated by a wedding reflection)

My heart is bursting with gratitude as I sit to write my first blog post since I reached out to all of my “old souls” at least a year ago. Those “old souls” are probably now ancient and I am now an “old ball and chain” aka… a wife!!

Friends, I wish that you could take a tour of my heart because a simple, yet public letter of thanksgiving will not adequately describe the how freaking honored I am to you who partied on down to Nola to watch Jared and I get married.

I hear that the ceremony was beautiful and that the party was amazing. The day passed so quickly for me that I will simply have to go off my snapshot memory and your crazy stories. But amidst all of the fun, those who attended our wedding reflected something so much deeper. Yes, our guests became a tangible illustration of the unifying and creative nature of love and they didn’t even know it! Allow me to explain.

Love by its nature unites. Rest assured that if there is disunity or isolation, there is lack of love.  

For one day, our guests came from everywhere to be unified in the celebration of Jared and me committing to a permanent love. There was no discord among those who attended because the celebration was more important. I know (because I invited them) that there are major differences in the lifestyles and beliefs held by our friends and family. On the day of our wedding however, it didn’t matter; the love between Jared and I became a source of unity and the response was the union of our loved ones who would otherwise have never met. Our guests illustrated perfect unity.

Love by its nature much increase upon itself. If love will not expand, it is a counterfeit (like lust or utility).

Our guests increased our love 100% (literally, there were two of us and there were 200 of them!) They made our love so much larger by adding to it their own love through their participation. Their prayers increased our prayers as they witnessed our commitment before God. They magnified our joy by eating, drinking and dancing on our behalf and they publicized the official Mr. and Mrs. Smyth as they paraded in the streets literally announcing to the tune Mardi Gras horns, sparklers and umbrellas that Jared and I are married! Imagine Jared and I doing all of that alone. While I wouldn’t put it past us, it would have been ridiculous. Love NEEDS to have more of itself in order to be legitimate. Our guest were the multiplication of our love.

Finally, love is by its nature completely faithful. If love is not committed, it can not be love.

Our friends were completely faithful to Jared and I on the day of our wedding. Some flew (in some cases across the Atlantic), some drove, some arranged work trips to get down to Lousiana and celebrate with us. I am still floored at the many who attended even if we haven’t seen each other in a few years whether we have known each other since kindergarten or since college.  Our friends were faithful, a complete act of love.

This matters far beyond my simple wish to be thankful. As someone who is mostly trying to change the world, I continually see that we tend to focus on what is wrong with the world and what is wrong with ourselves. Every time I get on Facebook I am bombarded with naysayers. “Sinner!” They proclaim, as if a remedy for our imperfections has not already been gifted to us. If we continue in this battle under the banner of "try to fix yourself because you are doing so much wrong" how can we continue and who will join us?

You see my friendly reader you were made by the same God who made the universe and although you may be doing a lot of things wrong; YOU ARE DOING A LOT OF THINGS RIGHT!! We often think that we are the center of the universe and that is what drives our selfishness and deceit. The bad and the risqué holds an attraction to our fallen nature but that is not new information. We can not give our imperfections all of our attention or we will miss the ways that we naturally exude holiness without even trying. When we forget ourselves for the sake of something greater and nobler, we actually look remarkably like the God in whose image we were made. That is HOLINESS!! You were made for it and you sometimes already accomplish it without knowing.

 

Those attended our wedding were mirrors to the love of our Father and man would not consider themselves religious. Imagine how far you can go if you recognize the goodness in yourself for what it really is, your heart leading you to the one true God only in whom can true fulfillment and perfect goodness can be found. Capitalize on your goodness, give God your worship and you will become who you were meant to be.

To everyone who was involved with our wedding, you have taught me so much about the love of the Lord and I really am eternally grateful. Thank you

Beating Around…Old Souls

Dear Old Souls,

Its Friday night and you would rather stay in than go out. You dream in black and white and your celebrity crush is Gregory Peck in the noble role of Atticus Finch. Smoking a tobacco pipe or reading a book with wine (or coffee, or tea, or whiskey) in hand sounds more attractive than entering into the twenty/ thirty something rage of the weekend. I mean what are those kids doing these days anyway!

If you identify with these sentiments my friend, then you are an old soul and this post is for you. See, I know you because I am one of you. I often wish that I were my grandma’s age and I long for a day in which I did not live. I wish that creativity was necessary for survival, commitment was not an option, and the stillness of nature was not drowned out by modern pop noise. I also want romantic relationships to be clearly defined, clearly followed and come with much less baggage (what the H is the difference between being exclusive and being official).

I write to you my wise sage because I often find that you are ashamed of your antique desires. You have been guilted into one too many nights out when you really would rather stay home and paint, whittle wood (I don’t know). But I am here to tell you that it is time to take a stand out of your rickety ole rockin chair. It is time to stop apologizing for your old fashioned flare and bestow some class on this generation of hooligans. Please allow me to tell you what you need to know and what you need to do about it.

What You Need To Know

You value personality! You know that the personality is infinitely deep and always changing. This makes its discovery the most enthralling adventure in the world. You like adventure. You have found that the same personality is in one moment a giant children’s museum filled with scientific experiments and brainteasers and in the next moment transforms into a reflective art gallery with expression as unique as its owner.  This is why you would rather sit and have a conversation with a friend than go to a wild party. You want to learn more about your friend. You want to explore another corner of their personhood. The depth of a story from your friend’s childhood is more wondrous than the flashy lights and bumping bodies that serve to hinder you in the discovery of your peers. Our generation has put up many barriers to your quest to explore the personality and you find many of these things to be a waste of time. 

 

Your love for personality also explains why you value older pop culture. This is why you feel disconnected from the Biebers and the Kesha’s of today. You recognize that there was a time when the status quo for a job well done meant that one poured every part of himself into his task. This type of “soul work” produced creation that reflected the personality of its creator. This still happens, but it is no longer the norm. As our society continues to devalue personhood, we also have devalued everything that the person creates leaving us with lifeless trinkets as entertainment.  You recognize these trinkets for exactly what they are and you pass them over in search of the real thing.

Second, What You Need To Do

Matthew 5:13 says, “ You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot.

Sure. If salt loses its saltiness, it needs to be thrown out but that doesn’t change the fact that we still need new salt. We need salty salt.

 

My old fashioned friend, YOU ARE THAT SALT and our world needs some new seasoning. Your generation needs you to stop trying to be hip when you know you just want to be human. See, your peers are aware that the postmodern life style is too complicated, too busy and too isolated but only you actually know what to do about it.

You can teach the world how to slow down by reminding them how fascinating a conversation can be. To learn the interests of someone new, no matter how different they are is your forte. The more interest you take in others, the more interest they will start to take in those around them.  

Stop allowing shallow conversation to happen around you. If you walk away thinking that we are spiraling into a black hole of teddy bears with exes on their eyes, ask your self, “How could I have used my excellent vocabulary, appreciation for history and superior IQ to raise the level of that conversation without seeming judgmental.” You have the power to change the conversation and possibly some intelligence along the way..

Lastly, stop observing and start creating. Because personality is your thing, you have the power to create beauty in a whole new way because you have classy taste and the help of modern technology. Do you love to read classics? Start a book club or better yet, write some new classics. Do you love music? Educate your friends on what quality music sounds like and how it can speak to the soul. Do you like art? Start creating art that will remind us that we were created to be good. Whatever your interest may be, start pouring your own personality into your work, share it with others, and teach them to do the same. This will start resurrect the depth that once existed in our culture.

Kindred spirit, the more that you insert your classy ways of the past into our monotonous days of the present, the more you can change the world by simply being you. So be proud of who you are and re teach the world how to live the good life. Thank you for your lovely life ideals… now I am going to go watch Singing in the Rain.

                   

                                  Mal

Beating Around... Social Media and Desire

What are the last 3?

I remember the very first time that I ever laughed hard at an internal audit joke. Once I finished, I realized that it had finally happened. Internal audit and the business world had finally taken over me completely… it had become the core of my very humor. I was horrified. I was no longer seeing the world from the perspective of a college student but from the perspective of a budding young adult professional with a bent towards the bore of accounting. I remember thinking, “ Mallory, if you think that accounting jokes are funny when even boring people are bored with accounting, there is no hope!” Dramatic? Maybe. But we tend to see the world through the eyes of our profession and as a young woman who left business for the mission field, I have a bad (or good depending on the audience) habit of relating almost everything back to Christianity. Yes, I have the super ability to tell you how your mosquito bite should remind

you of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Allow me to demonstrate.

My job requires me to spend much time in the bible and on social media. I have spent countless hours complaining about the problems that the Internet has caused in our society (just tell a middle schooler to ask a girl out in person and you will see what I mean). But it wasn’t until yesterday when I was knee deep in Psalm 101 that I was able to see so clearly the meaning of our obsession with Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and everything else for that matter. Intrigued? Well I sure hope so… allow me to explain.

Psalm 101 says, “ I will sing of your love and justice; to you, O Lord, I will sing praise. I will be careful to lead a BLAMELESS LIFE, when will you come to me? I will walk in my house with a BLAMELESS HEART!”

OMG My life is so interesting!

What would it actually look like if my life and heart were BLAMELESS? It is something I strive for but will not achieve completely until Heaven; so I compromise. Striving for a life and heart that is pure and blameless is difficult, but creating the illusion of a picture perfect life and heart… well there is Pinterest for that! 

When I am pinning, I am actually dreaming about my future; I dream out of a desire for perfection. My Pinterest life is perfectly organized. It is complete with a loving husband and adorable kids who run around in the DIY clothing that I had time to make in between, praying for my imaginary marriage 20 different ways, cooking the perfect paleo meal, baking the most unique cupcakes, sweating out the most intense workout, de cluttering the house completely, traveling to the most exotic places and all the while I am a skinny, well dressed, hospitable achievement woman who lives her life fearlessly according the inspirational quotes littered over the website (and of course my walls). But don’t worry; I am still sarcastic, witty, independent and strong. On my Pinterest boards, I have it all.

WE ARE SOOOO FUNNY!

The collage of my pins however is nothing more than a dream. As opposed to the pictures of a life full of energy, smiles, smiles beneath tears, and intrigue, I often don’t even get out of bed in a good mood. I barely cook. I rarely enter the world of DIY. My trust in God changes drastically accordingly the time passed since my last meal. I do not love others well and in the end… I’m sort of all about me. There is loneliness, a desperation, and a messiness about my life that I don’t want you to see and social media can help me fool you.

Pinterest is more my website of poison but Facebook, Twitter or Instagram serve the same purpose. We doctor our pictures and witty comments so that others think that our lives are more interesting than they are. It is in the effort that we put into to portraying a perfect life that reveals the truth; we genuinely desire that our lives be more than they are! We simply don’t know how to get there. Deeply we know that status, prestige, money, cool trips or witty sayings will only may us LOOK good. These things won’t MAKE us good.

So what’s the fix? Illnesses cannot be healed by merely treating the symptoms and asbestos filled houses cannot be lived in simply because their walls were painted. The sickness itself must be treated and the asbestos must be cleared. We can give off an image of perfection but we unless we deal with our deeper issues, true happiness may as will be a fantasy board on our Pinterest accounts.

To start, we have to be honest with ourselves. Ours lives will NEVER be picture perfect, but our deep desire for that kind of perfection should lead us to believe that there exists a perfection to fill that desire.

COFFEE SNOBS!!!

 C.S. Lewis wrote, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire, which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”

If that perfection exists, it is higher than we. We owe it to ourselves, and all the time that we spend pretending to search for it, to ACTUALLY find it and to ask it to extend it’s own perfection into our lives.

This is exactly who God is and what He does. He is the only perfection. The only way to fulfill our deep desire for this perfection is to allow Him to bestow his very self upon us. And to accept this perfection is to begin to trade out the characteristics of our heart for the characteristics of His. You know these characteristics. They are the ones that we sort of throw around at church but never take seriously. The one’s about honesty, integrity, purity, forgiveness and true love. What if we were to show the world truth that actually lies in our hearts and then allow God to take away the ugliness and make it beautiful? Then we wouldn’t have to dream about the perfection because it has become the goal, to be more like Christ. We wouldn’t have to paint the exterior of our lives to be pretty because the beauty of a heart given to the Lord would simply shine through.

Easier said than done? Sure! But according to my “Ummm can we go there” board, I am up for an adventure so why not try to let God clean out my heart and see where it takes me. 

Beating Around...An Attempt At Explaining the Trinity (How Original)

All! Hello! It has been so long since I have written but it is part of my Lenten sacrifice to start writing again. I have so many thoughts to share with you but I figured I would start with one of the biggest mysteries of the Christian faith. Go big or go home right?

This summer, I heard an explanation of the trinity that kind of blew my mind and so I will now attempt to pass it on to you without committing heresy. Here. Goes. Nothing.

If you acknowledge the Christian God as God then you must acknowledge St. John ‘s definition that GOD IS LOVE! 

And so to understand the nature of God we can look to the nature of love and to understand the nature of love, we can look to the nature of God. The two are interchangeable. Let us start with love and begin with what we know… relationships.

Disclaimer: I know that my little illustration below is simple and idealistic. Many of us have had disastrous relationships but in doing so I would bet that we were searching for something that would mirror what I have described one way or another.  Ok onward.

Illustration: Boy meets girl, girl meets boy. Boy likes girl; girl tolerates boy. The two go out on their first date and have an amazing time. As the dates continue and the individuals get to know each other, they begin to find a radiating joy in sharing life with each other. She takes his breath away; he makes her laugh... they even disagree well. The two are finding a deeper life fulfillment because they have found a partner with whom they can share their life. They can make choices together, support each other, they can give love to one another and know that they will receive it back. In fact, this love often becomes so strong… deepening as it grows, that the couple decide that they want to share it with everyone! They want everyone to be in on the love that they are giving to one another, and so they make it official. They have a wedding, everybody parties (Jesus' first miracle hollaaaa) and the couple not only spread the love that they are giving and receiving to one another, but they stamp it to be eternal… till death to they part. True love must be shared. True love must be eternal.

The fun however, does not stop there! It continues, this eternal living love is completed through creation. No matter your opinion on sex and babies, natural sex ends in the creation of something that at one time did not exist. True love must be shared. True love must be eternal. True love must create.  

And so we come back to trying to understand the trinity. Love is meant to be given and received… it is meant to be shared. Love is then made complete when it is made eternal, but it actually ends in creation (again I am not trying to impose a view, I am just looking at the natural law of sex… it ends with the creation of a child.) And so complete love must involve three. We can know this because we can see it, but it reflects what is unseen. God is love, and we are made in God’s image. We are made in the image of love.

Ok, with that said, let us try to understand the trinity. If God is love, then by nature, God can not end on himself. Because GOD IS LOVE, there must be a giver and a receiver… God the Father and God the Son. And so as God is perfect love, the Father is constantly pouring out His love on God the son who receives it fully and then gives it back onto God the father. But if love is only completed in the form of creation, then the constant essence of a love exchanged must create a third being, the Holy Spirit. See, if God is love, then love is only completed when shared and given through at least three beings. If God is not three, God is not love and God is not God.