I went to a church here in Edinburgh today. They are putting on a show for the Fringe festival. The postcard they handed me told me I was in the right place today.
It said:
alive!
‘The greatest gift you can give to the world is your own story.’ (They added the bold emphasis.)
Seems they are bringing together performers in dance, poetry, live music and improv comedy. Some are from the television show, ‘So You Think You Can Dance’, Broadway and the LA comedy institution The Groundlings. They are drawing upon ‘real life stories to take people on a fun and awe-inspiring journey. Alive! will renew faith, hope and love in and for the human experience. Come hear the story.’
You know that I’m laughing out loud because it’s so obvious that I was supposed to be there. I almost didn’t go today because, although I have a deep faith and a seminary education, I had not found my church experience in America to be something that I have been able to connect with my faith. And, as the daughter of a man who was a preacher his whole life and coming out of the thinking that you had to go to church to have faith, I’ve been to a lot of churches. I’ve been a youth leader, part of the music team, etc.
But, for whatever reason, I knew I’d end up in Scotland and I knew that I wanted to go to church here. I looked up churches and listened to some of the messages online when Scotland was scarcely a gleam in my eye. And so that is how I found myself at church this morning. The message was about the nature of God as father and how people often have difficulty with this image as it is defined by their experience of earthly fathers. And they showed a clip of ‘The Dick and Rick Hoyt Story,’ which I had seen part of before. But it struck me in a new way today, partly because of a comment a woman made on my blog recently, http://www.charlenamiller.com/2010/08/05/love-beginning-end-in-betwee/. It kept rolling around in me.
The woman, Karen, with unabashed honesty shared that she went full out for love and it didn’t work out. And I thought about that. Are we supposed to be practical and reserved and careful in love? Aren’t we supposed to try to keep the score even—I’ll do this much, you do that much and that’s how we’ll keep balance in the relationship?
The message today that included the Dick and Rick Hoyt story gave me greater clarity about how to love, because I know—really know—finally in my life that there is a God and he loves me outrageously, irrationally and there is absolutely no balance. He throws my rules of how love would work best out of the window. He claims to love more than any of the best earthly fathers. So if you look at Dick and Rick Hoyt, you can see a son who asked the near impossible of his father, and you see a father who gave it, requiring tremendous rigor, perseverance, faith, hope, discipline, commitment… and love.
I think the thing for me is to continually discern whether what I’m doing and feeling is truly love or something else. Karen shared that she is also looking inward to know herself better. I find that I know myself better and I understand love more deeply when I choose to believe and allow God to show me more of himself and his love because it’s so radically different than my own. It is wild and extravagant and breathtaking. He doesn’t give me everything I want, but he loves me enough to give me what I need when I simply believe that he’s there and allow the miracles. Have you ever tried to do something for someone who won’t let you? There’s not much you can do short of tackling them and making them let you do it, but most of us wouldn’t do that because we care about them. Even though at times I resist his love, or can’t see the wisdom in his love, he persists.
And so, as much as I thought I wanted love to be practical and manageable, to be something I could understand and define, looking at God’s example, I realize that I don’t really want it any of these ways. The kind of love modeled by Christ and God is fully and completely unreasonable, doing the unimaginable for no comprehensible explanation, and not dependent on how ‘good’ I am. So whether a person believes in Christ or God or anything that comes close to a Creator, I think that if you believe that love is something wild and unexplainable and miraculous and something you’d die for, some part of you believes in a God that would love you with a mad and crazy love and create you to do the same.
I wonder what would happen if a person chose to believe, consciously believe, in a God who is Love for a day? For me, it takes more faith to choose to believe that someone could experience undying romantic love. I know it seems paradoxical but I’ve been a bit of a cynic about any kind of ‘forever’ love on earth thing, so I’m going to choose to be a believer instead of a cynic for a day just to see what I learn. Don’t even know exactly what I will do differently or how one day of believing something will make a difference. As my motto goes when I decide to do something new, ‘no matter what, it’ll be an experience.’ If you also choose to try one of these, let me know what you learn.
Ah love, crazy amazing. Here’s to you, Karen, and every single person who throws their whole self in. I love this quote by Robert Mallet, ‘I have every reason to love you. What I lack is the unreason.’