Then we had a prayer and everyone brought food, so we all sat around socializing and just talking to one another.  I got caught up talking to this woman I met on Sunday named Elaine.  She's one of those people who doesn't stop once she gets started.  And she's also one of those who doesn't have a filter--she says whatever comes into her mind but tells it in such a vivid way, you can almost see the motion picture behind her eyes.  People like that fascinate me, so I just sat and listened to her and she began telling me how God's taught her the hard lesson of having no other gods before him.  She told of how her sister had been her rock and then she died.  Well, just shortly after, she said the man she worked for filled that void her sister left by becoming someone Elaine could lean on--he was now her rock.  Only, he died too.  

It was kind of weird how that happened.  But she made her point that God should have been her "one and only" the whole time and that it took a lot of pain to figure that out.  She then segued into a whole story about the man she worked for, which somehow took another tangent into her teen years when she worked for a woman who paid her $5 a week back in the 70s to baby-sit her children and later accused her of sleeping with her husband (to which Elaine vowed that she hadn't).

She went on and on, and I feel like I got quite a glimpse into this woman's life, just in the half hour she talked.  Afterward, I guess I just started thinking about how many people there are who need to talk and be listened to.  She's kind of crazy--this lady--but I really enjoyed listening to her.  We laughed a lot.  She said the oddest things, but I do love odd people.  After that, I didn't get to have any in-depth conversations with any other church members, but I chatted briefly with a few, and I just love them all.  

An absurd but true statement needs to be inserted here: people are cool.  I was just in such a state of elation all the way home.  I love my family.  And the world is a good place because of them.  

Avenues to Cloud 9 and Neverland are there in the dirt if you just look for them.  

In His Steps

 

            I’ve been assigned to read a fictional book called “In His Steps” for my Acts class.  I just finished it.  Perhaps because of the time in my life that I’ve read it, (three months into my missionary apprentice training), I have found it to be inspirational and motivating in a way that I cannot recall ever having experienced so strongly while reading another book.  Briefly, it can be described as the foundation for the nearly out-of-date phrase “What would Jesus do?”  It is based off of an actual story of a minister from Topeka, Kansas who gave consecutive Sunday-night sermons about what would happen in the lives of various people were they to live according to the question “What would Jesus do?”  In short, it illustrates what the first-century church would look like if it were uprooted and set in motion at the end of the 19th century. 

            Now, despite the occurrence of my growing passion for the church, throughout my reading I’d thought of the story as “idealistic.”  And this is because, though it is encouraging to read about the great changes that took place in the fictional Christians in fictional America, the fact of the matter remains that: should the actual society we live in today try to live by this question, it would fail.  There are not enough people in any one place who possess the faith to fulfill this kind of commitment as a community if ever they tried.  Though mankind was not born evil, it has certainly proved throughout the ages that we have evil tendencies that we allow to rule us.  Redundantly, repeatedly, incessantly, over and over, without fail, we’ve allowed Satan to win, and we will continue to do so.  We have made the spiritual battle into something of a joke with Satan nothing more than the fictional bad guy in the book of life.  Because we have belittled him so much in our minds, any fault/wrongdoing/sin we commit we only charge against ourselves.  We don’t attribute any of our weaknesses to Satan, and have, in so thinking, embraced the other side of the spectrum.  We revel in our debauchery.  Inwardly, we applaud our friends when they screw up because on some level it’s almost cathartic.  We can feel better about ourselves, assured that everyone else is just as appallingly inadequate as we are.  The result?  We have sunk into a mire that does not allow for faith.  Faith is only an ideal. 

            Having felt this way throughout the book, I now have to say that once I arrived at the end, there was a decided change of heart.  Somewhere between these thoughts and the end of this novel, I thought back to Dark Knight.  Yes, lol, I thought of Batman.  I thought back to that great scene towards the end where he and the Joker have their final struggle and they’re both practically hanging off the side of a skyscraper, fighting for the detonator to the ferries that, surprisingly, haven’t blown each other up.  Heath Ledger--I mean, the Joker--is certain one boat will surely kill the other.  But Batman, paragon of good that he is, says the Joker underestimates the morality of Gotham City.  There won’t be any explosion.  And there isn’t.  The Joker, though he thrives on chaos, is dumbfounded in this moment.  Gotham’s display of morality is weird, foreign, insane because of its lack of chaos.  It is not in line with the expected lack of virtue the Joker is relying on, and so he then has to try to sustain chaos himself. 

            Through this scene, I realized two things: first, that this movie is a perfect portrayal of The Spiritual Battle and second, that it shows a world that believes in something more than subjective morality.  Why is this a revelation?  Because it shows that our world has not sunk so low as we all seem to think.  The makers of this movie, anyone affiliated with it, believes in an absolute standard of truth.  Like the writer of “In His Steps.”  Like all of humanity.  Faith is not idealistic.  It is epic and revered and told of in every great movie/book/song of good and evil.

            Like Dark Knight, “In His Steps,” remains so embedded in my mind.  It is the first century church brought back to life again for me, and it has spoken to me concerning so many different aspects of what it means to live as Jesus would.  Rid of my thoughts concerning its probable idealism, I can see that instead, it is visionary.  It is filled with nothing but application: it reveals many corrections to the church as we know it. 

            I will speak of perhaps the most important: it nearly shouts out that to follow Christ, a person has to first embrace humility.  The minister in the story is a very well-educated man of high social standing.  He is a man of eloquence in the delivery of his sermons and pride in his identity as the minister of a high-standing congregation with wealthy members.  When he comes to face an extremely poor man who publicly questions what it means to be a Christian and later dies in the minister’s home, the minister realizes how everything in his life had been materialistic and not at all about following Christ.  This changes everything he does.  He leads his life with the question of what Christ would do.  His sermons and prayers become all but eloquent.  They are broken.  He learns what it means to sacrifice and give to people who’ve never lived outside the confines of need.  He learns compassion.  And, he learns that he doesn’t have all the answers.  Even as a minister, he can’t solve the problems of everyone who comes to him. 

            To become humble is demeaning and utterly in opposition to our society.  “Weakness,” as it would be called, is not prized.  It is greatly looked down on, and we struggle our hardest not to let it leak out between the cracks of this great image we construct of ourselves.  It’s true.  In almost everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done my best to do it in a way that conveys my intelligence.  Papers I’ve written, presentations I’ve given, I’ve always tried to make sure that I appear smart.  And this is because my intelligence, since college, has always been something I’ve been uncertain about.  I would cringe to think that someone might suspect my insecurity, that I wasn’t smart.  But it’s something I’ve decided within myself to work on.  So I’m not the brightest crayon in the box.  That’s okay.  It doesn’t mean that I, as a person, don’t have a purpose.  On the contrary, I try to remind myself that there is something to gain by accepting my imperfections and using them in ministry, in helping other people.  Something C.S. Lewis says in his Mere Christianity is this idea that of course people (and he was, I think, speaking of the church) are all at different levels and some of us will be incapable of certain things.  But it is important that we try to make the most of the talents God has endowed us with--an important realization in relation to humility.

            I could go on and on about the different observations I’ve made about this book and my personal application of them.  There are so many things to talk about.  But instead, I will simply encourage you to read it.  See how the people come to a better understanding about Christ through suffering, or how bonds of community are strengthened when they all work towards the common goal of serving Christ.  Again, it was a very inspiring read, and I hope that just in my telling you about it, you might share in my enthusiasm, and that you might go so far as to allow your faith to consider this cheesy, rather ridiculous question, “What would Jesus do?” as a mode for how you live your life.  We are certainly called to try.

Now when I say "blog," I refer, really, to my writing in general because it has always been a passion I've cheated on.  I really do enjoy it.  Honest, I do.  Many times in the past I've had the experience of re-reading a journal entry or a story or even a school essay and have found solace in my own words.  This may seem odd, but something about them comforts me.  Don't ask me to explain it.  Yet, throughout the entirety of my life, I've never been one to write consistently.  All of my journals are half-filled.  Half-empty.

I spent the majority of this last week in Ruidoso, NM at a little retreat.  We (all the AIMers, and AIM assistants and our speaker and his family) stayed at a church camp owned by the Sunset Church of Christ in Ruidoso called Mountain View.  It was a small campsite, but set in a pocket at the foot of the mountains that offered a wonderful panoramic of young hills stretching across the horizon, like they were off on a pilgrimage, journeying along the edge of the earth with their full-grown leaders at the head. 

I love nature.  I grew up a tomboy with all of my boy cousins, always outside doing God knows what.  Naturally, the first thing I did was throw all my stuff in the cabin and walk down the wagon-wheel rutted path to the little creek at the end of the campsite.  A few of us took off our shoes and waded down it.  My feet got pretty numb, but it was water, and I was outside, and people were climbing trees and spreading out exploring the embankment while the air got chilly and the sun went down, and the general feelings of contentment and playfulness and simplicity settled over all of us.

The staff built a nice campfire for us under the gazebo that night, and we all sat in a circle together singing, praying, listening to the speaker.  This is how every night went, and the days were filled with lessons over the Sermon on the Mount from an interesting (both in physical appearance and personality) man named Mike Tanaro.  He was a great speaker.  I think my favorite part of all the lessons was his explaining the beatitudes.  Though I've read them a hundred times, I've never really taken them in.  He started off explaining that anything you read in the Bible needs to be heard the way that the people being spoken to would have heard.  Jesus' saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," etc, is Jesus speaking to people who ARE poor in spirit.  They're poverty-stricken.  He then explained that the kingdom of heaven is the rule of God within people's hearts.  For God to rule in your heart, you must first find a need for him/be poor in spirit.

But then he asked what the word "blessed" meant.  He said it had a lot of different meanings in the Greek: it referred to a "utopian" island that had everything necessary for people to sustain themselves and live a good life; it was also an oasis in the desert; and it was an exclamation of good fortune.  

So for someone to be blessed if they are "poor in spirit," "mourn," "are meek," "hunger and thirst for righteousness," "are merciful," "pure in heart," "peacemakers," "persecuted for righteousness' sake," "and are reviled and persecuted," it is an exclamation of good fortune.  It's like reaching an oasis.  It is a good thing in life.  Because each one leads to the next.  Being poor in spirit causes you to mourn, which causes you to be meek (which means subject to control), which then fills you with a hunger for righteousness, etc.  Each one teaches/prepares you for the next blessing, until you reach a perfection also known as spiritual maturity.  

For Jesus to say this to people who were poor and oppressed must have been a "blessing" as well.  Something that caused them to have hope and faith and a desire to have these things.  And as it was something that must have hit them in a powerful way, I think it's meant to do the same for us.  Because if you think about it, we are an oppressed kind of society.  Society tells us their is no immutable truth.  There is nothing solid to cling to, which (even if you're strong) has a way of working on you and separating you from God.  And then you feel lost and apathetic towards life.  You can't see meaning or you can't bring yourself to believe it's attainable, and that things like God's love are fairy-tale.  That was my experience during my senior year at ACU.  Feeling separated from God.  And so for me... this was an experience of good news.  I was... glad to know that the beginning of a relationship with God starts with feeling poor in spirit.

Anyway, they were the kind of lessons that leave you actually desiring to be mature spiritually.  To know what that would be, to be transformed and changed and to just be strong.  And it's a heady kind of feeling when complemented with conversations with so many different people, hearing about their lives and struggles and pasts and wants.  And then spending quiet time with God.  And... even just playing.  Playing games and laughing and eating.  

Lol.  Or even whittling.  (On Thursday a group of us went into town and wandered through all the little shops where I bought two knives.  Another girl and I later decided to take up whittling and managed to strip some sticks of their tree skin, which was great fun.  I think all girls should own a knife).

Anywho.  It was just a wonderful experience.  I feel rejuvenated and eager for the coming 7 months of training and getting to know my classmates better.  Excitement doesn't even really describe it.  I'm just happy.  Happy to be here and hopeful that things will only get better and that I'll get stronger, more mature.

To all of you who read this, I hope you feel blessed.  And I hope... I don't know.  I just hope a lot of things for you.  I have several different people coming to mind right now, and I'm praying for you guys.  I love you all.

I'll leave you with a verse that the preacher at Lockney told me to meditate on last Sunday:

Philippians 2:13

"My beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure."

You could say I sit both comfortably and uncomfortably atop the pinnacle of tension--the point where Joy and Trepidation brush by one another, or hold hands, or occasionally even wage war.  Yet, it's not a strange seat.  I find it becoming more familiar with each passing day.

The scene.  Lubbock is a lot like Abilene.  In the sense that it's not too terribly large--rather dry and brown--and filled with people who are searching for someone like little ants after a bit of rain--scrambling and bumping, appearing simultaneously frenzied and nonchalant on their trek.

My roommates, for instance, are interesting people.  I find myself constantly assigning new meaning to who they are as individuals.  I like discovering them.  Jessica, who is 21 and an English major from Oklahoma Christian University, and I share a room--a tiny little slab of a thing at the back of our two-bedroom apartment.  Megan is 18, from San Antonio, and just graduated high school.

I like them both immensely.  Jessica's a bit shy at first and comes off as not the most confident person, but now that we're all settled in and more comfortable, she's ridiculously hilarious and quite assertive about her opinions.  She has a pink shirt with the republican elephant and democratic donkey facing one another with the words "Everyone poops," underneath them.  Bah ha.  I love it.

Megan on the other hand seems very confident in herself, yet I wouldn't describe her at all as arrogant.  She's very down-to-earth, honest and upfront, and for being so young, seems to have a fairly good grasp on who she is.  I admire her sturdiness and find it rather humorous that 2 or 3 different guys have brought her food (she's been sick) that they actually cooked themselves.  I at first took her for the kind of girl who things were easy for.  But as I slowly spend more time with her, I've found out a lot of things that I would never have guessed.  More than anything I respect her.  She's endured a lot and carries on without a drop of self-pity.

So yes.  I'm enjoying them, along with so many members of my class whom I'd love to (and probably will) rant about at some point throughout the next eight months of my training.     

The plot.  How is training?  Well, orientation was long and rather redundant.  I'm not used to having rules explained to me so many times anymore.  Nor am I used to people asking so many common sense questions like they did during our first few classes.  I am constantly reminded of how much older I am than the majority of the kids here (a whole lot of them are fresh out of high school) and that I need to be patient with the rate in which things are taking place.  It's just taking some re-adjusting.  

You know, initially, when I first envisioned myself coming to AIM, I only pictured all the learning and discoveries that would occur in the classroom.  For me.  Yet now, I have a feeling I may also play the role of teacher to some degree.  The students and even some of the professors lean towards the conservative side, which is something I'm finding I am no longer.  I feel within the very core of myself that I'm soon to be asking questions to get them all thinking about things in ways they're not really used to.  In fact, I'm actually looking forward to it.  

However, please don't get me wrong.  I don't think I'm better than anyone here, nor am I trying to take this lofty position by looking down on my classmates for their youth/ignorance.  I intend to ask people what they believe for their (and my) edification.  Another recent discovery.  Something I got into the habit of doing at ACU, and something I see as direly important to our lives as Christians.  If you only ever follow the system of beliefs you were handed down without questioning those beliefs... well, it doesn't exactly enable you to have a better relationship with God, does it?  Rather, it has been my experience that trusting others' thoughts over your own only provides you a relationship with yourself--you obey some pretty subjective rules, maybe even believe you're a good person for keeping them, but you really only remain on the peripheral side, on the outskirts.  You really only answer to you because you don't know the why.  You don't understand why certain things are wrong, (in the innermost chamber of your  heart that no one sees), yet you're willing to fight to the death if someone argues against you.  At some point, you begin to feel empty and that this can't be love because shouldn't love be more than making sure a person doesn't clap/play instruments during service?  Shouldn't it be more than always pointing a finger or shoving feelings of doubt about your own salvation into the pit of your being?  Eventually, you cross your own lines--break your own rules--and take on the role of the hypocrite, holding on for dear life to those old rules.  Because they give you some semblance of identity, even if you can't always obey them.  They're old and comfortable.  Maybe one day you'll be able to miraculously obey them.

This was me.  Before I went to ACU and learned that nothing in life is black and white, that what Jesus came to preach is love rather than law.  Before I learned to question everything.  Now, it's about coming up with questions.  And sharing them--because they're a gift really--with people who have never been asked.  Who don't know what they believe.  Who don't know to question.

Internal monologue.  I would be a liar if I said I knew and loved God as I do my own father.  Or that I have unfailing faith or that I am the best person for the job that I'm up for.  It would even be a lie to say that I have every bit of confidence that I won't let God down as I pursue this whole missionary apprentice thing.

But man, I have a lot of hope.  I believe that when people can collectively get to the stage where they're questioning, then lots of things can happen.  Community can form.  Foundations can be constructed.  Walls can be fortified.  And great heights can be reached.

I want this for my classmates here, and I will do what I can to bring it about.  It all, of course, is in God's hands.

In closing, I ask that you please pray for me.  That in my day to day life, I will learn to be humble and that I will always do every act out of love.  And I also ask that, even though what I've talked about here has been on my mind all week, that you pray for me to see other things that I am not even focused on.  Other things that are equally important and unknown to me.

Please pray for my classmates as well, my professors, just all the Christians here at Sunset, that we can all try to do our best here and make the most of this opportunity.

With all of my love,

Casey

Barbara, the secretary, has already sent us a list of who's rooming together.  My roommate's name is Jessica.  I e-mailed her the day I got her info, and I'm pretty excited.  She's an English and Art major (my major and just-shy-of-3-classes minor).  I think we'll get along well together.

Still praying about support.

I made a list of about 60 businesses to send letters to yesterday and today.  My friend, Dusty, said she sent letters to about 45 places back in high school when she was trying to raise money for a cheerleading camp in Australia.  We'll see how missions fares in comparison.

I'm worried, but at the same time, I'm not.  God's always made the way for me in the past.

Hmm... even I'm surprised by how excited I am.

:)