simple revolution.

This morning we visited Magdalen College, climbed the tower, poked around, etc. We then wandered onto Addison walk, a pretty sort of footpath that winds through trees and around wetlands and feels very much like an old country lane. A poem by C.S. Lewis is engraved on a plaque that hangs partway around the walk, apparently as a tribute to his conversion to theism which took place one night on that path. I thought it was beautiful, and so I would like to share it:

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:

This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you.
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
Quick, quick, quick, quick! – the gates are drawn apart.
-C.S. Lewis

About half an hour ago, walking down Brasenose ave, I passed a man asking for change. He was sitting with his back against the wall, holding a tattered paperback. I passed within two feet of him, heard him gently ask for a few pence. I passed within two feet of him, heard his voice, noticed his presence, and ignored it. I averted my eyes and walked by.

A few yards further, it occured to me that I had passed a human being. I felt a slight twinge of guilt. I honestly haven't a single pence, and if I had, I still wouldn't have given it to him. I want to make it clear that this is not an issue of giving money to beggars. It is an issue of giving love to people. My stomach turned over, but I kept walking and arguing to myself why it would have been pointless to stop. I knew it was a poor argument, I knew which side would win, and yet it was still nearly the end of the lane before I turned about and walked back.

I would so like to tell myself that I fixed the problem by turning around, but of course that is a blatant lie. It doesn't matter that I apologized for passing without even making eye contact, it doesn't matter that I sat down talked for a while afterwards, it doesn't matter at all because the problem is not that I passed a man sitting on a corner. The problem is that I didn't even recognize him as human. It never occurred to me, as I was passing him, to consider what it would feel like to be passed over as less important than the pavement.

Again, to clarify, this has nothing to do with people asking for money. This has nothing to do with the proper responses to begging, or the ethics of charity, or the causes of poverty. This is about something very deep inside me that is broken and ugly and gnarled. I like to ignore it. I like to pretend that nothing is broken, that this black mess does not exist. Every once in a while, though, someone forces me to recognize the dark scab of decay that is festering somewhere inside me, in a space that has rotted away with decay and anger and self-absorption and hatred. I think this space must be somewhere near my stomach, or perhaps my lungs, because the moment I am made aware of it, I suddenly feel as if I might vomit, and I struggle to gasp for air.

God, forgive me for my callousness, my selfishness. Forgive me for neglecting your creation and allowing it fall into such a state of decay. Thank you that your love for others is not dependant on my ability to show it, but that you love without restraint. Thank you that, though you need me not, you still desire and allow me to partake in your outpouring of love. Destroy me, and fill the absense of my own self with yours, that I might better learn to love and serve.

It's been a while. I feel as if I should apologize. It's not that God hasn't been working, or that I haven't been in awe of what He is doing- I merely haven't had time to write.

Lately my prayer life has been terrible. That happens, it comes and goes. Sometimes prayer is as natural as breathing, as blinking your eyes, or brushing the hair out of your eyes when it is windy. Sometimes prayer comes easily and constantly, and I find myself every moment reveling in the presence of my Lord. These are my favorite times.

Then, there are times like the present. These times I am not fond of. I wish they would go away and not come back. I wish I wasn't broken. I wish my mind worked properly and my heart was whole, because if my mind and heart were working I would never even be able to stop talking to God. If something wasn't broken somewhere in humanity, I think we would be a noisy bunch of people because we would always be babbling senselessly in awe of God's sovereignty, and He would always be laughing at us and trying to make us shut up so He could speak and teach us something. And when we heard His voice we would fall silent and listen. Golly, listen to me. Talk about babbling. Someday it will be like that, someday we won't be broken any more-- beautiful day.

I have come to the following conclusion. I want to talk to God. I'm desperate to pray. But something is disconnected so I can't come up with the words. I become frustrated because I don't know what to say to God. So I give up my attempt. With each failed attempt, the next attempt becomes a little shabbier, a little more pathetic.

Yesterday I stumbled across a wonderful quote by T.S. Eliot. I was becoming contented with a stagnant relationship with God, so He threw something into my path to trip me and jolt me back to my senses. "It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words." Alright, then. I'll keep struggling till my lungs open, or till my face turns blue from lack of air.

I've been trying all semester to make it to the prayer group that meets Thursday nights at Taylor, and this week I finally did. First of all, the group itself is incredible. It is actually a real community, which is, sadly, hard to find at our community-focused Christian school. We praised God together, we shared stories of how He had been working in our lives over the past week, we heard a teaching on healing prayer, and then we divided into groups (you could choose to join a circle of discussion, intercession, prophetic prayer, or healing). I hope to be able to go consistently next semester.

But it was actually afterward that God really spoke to me. I was walking up the stairs in my dorm behind a girl I didn't know at all, and she noticed me and said "-Hey- you were at Thursday night!" She introduced herself and asked what I thought of my first time there. Then she told me- and God's timing is incredible that we were on the staircase at just the same moment- that she had been feeling strongly that she was supposed to pray for me, but didn't get a chance during the meeting. So, she prayed for me then.

It was hard to believe we had only met minutes before, and she knew absolutely nothing about me. The things she prayed for were so specific, exactly the areas where I desperately need prayer right now. They were also things that I don't share with anyone, sometimes not even myself. Obviously the Spirit was giving her words to pray; she would never have prayed for all those things without the Spirit's intercession. What this means is incredible, because it implies that the Spirit knew the words to give her. God knows me. I mean, He really knows me. He knows the part of me that I don't show to other people. Of course I know that God knows me, that He created me, etc, etc, but for the most part I know that He knows me in the same way that I know that an electron behaves both as a particle and a wave- it's an abstract concept that can be diagramed and supported and defined, but is never quite explained satisfactorily. The only way that someone could really understand electron behavior—and I mean really understand on a deeply intimate level of understanding and experience—would be to actually see one. I just read over that, and it’s a terrible illustration, but now it’s too late to pick a new one so hang with me. When Angela prayed for me, it was her voice but God’s words; they must have been His words, because they couldn’t possibly have been hers. I actually heard Him tell me about myself. I saw a glimpse of the depth of His relationship with me, the relationship I’m created for and have thus far only begun to scratch the surface of. God actually knows me. Let me pause a minute while I attempt, for the hundredth time in the past few days, to understand that truth. He knows me more than I know myself. He wants to know me, He considers me worth knowing, me, foolish, lost, confused, wandering. God knows me, and that fact moves me to tears.

Lord and King, I don’t even deserve your recognition, much less your intimate attention. I’m overwhelmed with gratefulness and bewilderment. Any attempt at expressing my awestruck, unworthy gratefulness weak and foolish compared to what you deserve, so I won’t even attempt to put it to words except to say thank you. Thank you, thank you.

k. rose

God, thank you for pouring rain. Thank you for water dripping from my hair and rolling off my face. I can't fathom the creativity that imagined evaporation/condensation, the interaction of tactile and thermoreceptors that allow us to feel the rain. These aren't textbook phenomena, they're incredible tangible proof that you are truly great, truly awesome, truly wise, truly creative. Even the most learned, skilled, analytical scientist can't offer an experiment to test what beauty is or explain how it is derived from phase changes, weather patterns, the nervous system, etc. Lord, thank you for the way the rain washes everything clean, gives everything a fresh start. Thank you for sending rain today, for more and greater and deeper reasons than I can fathom, but also simply because you knew that it was what I needed. Thank you for compassion and your inexplicable love for your bride-- individuals, the Church as a whole-- thank you for mercy and for genuinely desiring our purity so that we can be in your presence. You are merciful, you are wonderful, you are beyond words.


k. rose