Tough Love

Sorry for the radio silence, friends. I've started like four different posts in the last week or so, but none of them have made it up yet. It's been a turbulent few weeks with lots of ups and downs. crazy weather (seriously Seattle? Snow? in March?), really awesome stuff happening for Jeny, my car broke and I couldn't fix it myself, I had a terrible audition which somehow managed to boost my confidence (thanks God), I'm 100% sure I failed what should have been one of the easiest classes I've taken post high school (and I'm trying not to totally freak out about it), Lizzie and Darcy finally got together on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries! (I know it's not real, but it's the little things this week ok?), I was reminded what community looks like, chose to change myself for the better, and I've had little to no human contact with people over the age of fifteen in a couple weeks.

All that said, I've been doing a crap ton of thinking, because on top of my life simultaneously going to hell and  looking up, God decided to dump some pretty heavy revelation in the mix. And yea, there's probably a pretty big part of it that needed to happen while I was too busy paying attention to other stuff, but on top of everything else that was going on, it just seemed to be pulling me in the wrong directions. But of course they were precisely the directions I need to be moving in, and failed class, crappy audition, lost community or not, I figured out what I'm supposed to be doing. Like, capital letters, whole life, big picture supposed to be doing.

Guys, I'm a reconciler. Which according to spell check isn't a word, but neither is profenciler, and the former is at least mostly a real word. I was put on this planet to help people figure out why they can't get along, and help them to rectify it. Within the church, in the world outside it, and probably most importantly in ways that bring the two together. I've felt the pain of the division in my heart between the Arts and the Church, and nerds and hipsters, and Christians and everyone else for a long time. And though I've always known it, I'm just starting to put words around why that has always made me sad, and why I'm not going to stand for it anymore.

Because God loves all of us. We are all his children. All part of his family and his kingdom. Regardless of where we're 'at' in our faith, or how ready we are to recognize where we separate ourselves or other people from God, or how willing to hear other people's stories, God loves us. Right where we're at. 

I had lunch with a friend on Sunday, and as so frequently happens in my times with her, I left feeling like I had a lot to think about, and slightly frustrated. Not by her, or our conversation, but at how little I understood about the views of people who think differently than me. My fervor about wanting people to see conflicting perspective as valid was dampened slightly by what seems like humanity's inability to do so. But I don't buy it. I can do it. And if I can do, most of the planet should be able to. And yet they can't. And I don't understand why. 

My friend told me that I don't have as much at stake in holding my beliefs loosely. I have stake in them as beliefs, but not as something rigid and immovable. For some reason I can also hold other people's and not worry about dropping my own. (If only I could juggle that well in real life I'd finally have a marketable circus skill.) She asked me who loses if those people choose not to change, if they remain in their room and ignore the rest of the house. I answered, everyone. 

Because by cutting themselves off from the rest of the house, they diminish it's overall value. Suddenly there's a room that not everyone can use. It's exclusive, members only. Others may enter, but they can only stay if they take off their shoes and they promise not to move anything. I understand the comfort of such rooms, I lived in one for a very long time. But then I explored the rest of the house, and the things and people and ideas I discovered were too life altering to ever want to return to that tiny secluded space ever again. 

And to make matters worse the people in such rooms tend to regard the rest of the house as less than the one room they know. They discuss the other rooms, most of which they've never been in, as though they know everything about them from just a cursory glance. They see them as something separate when in fact they are all part of the same house. The other rooms don't match theirs. The decor is foreign. The door opens the other way or is a different color. The books on the shelves are categorical instead of alphabetical, or not organized at all, or are different books. The furniture is too big, or too small, or too extravagant, or too simple. So they stay in their room, because it makes sense. And because in order for their room to be the proper one the others have to be wrong. 

That's the part I don't understand. I get that the Christian faith is 'narrow'. I understand, and hold the belief, that Jesus is the way we come into the Kingdom of God. But what it that didn't mean heaven? What if it didn't mean Jesus the way he looks on our crosses and stained glass windows? As I was walking through Target with Jeny yesterday, she had a similar sentiment. What if we accept that Jesus looks different to different people? What if we ignore eternity (which is already taken care of) and focus on a world that is in ever growing need of something besides doctrine? What if, when it comes right down to it, Jesus is love, and showing that love to others is how the kingdom grows?

I drew this today:

 It's not finished yet, but when it is it will be covered in words. And those words will represent everything I can think of. Because the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Though it is the smallest of seeds when planted it grows in to the largest tree with such big branches that all the birds can perch in it's shade.