The Bus Not the Boat
(Guest Post by Journey Community Member Laura Baker)
If you're like me, hearing all this stuff about change and growth is really annoying. All the seafaring goofiness aside, I'm not a huge fan of uninvited chaos (troubled waters?), and contemplating all the ways in which change is organic to being a Christian is just not what I'm looking for right now.
Probably like many of you, I am one of those people Danielle was talking about when she said a lot of us Journeyers are in transition. For me, the transition was mostly forced upon me, and therefore highly unwelcome. And I'm guessing, then, that this series about rocking the boat (that one was for you, Danielle) will probably be both very appropriate and also quite difficult.
Don't get me wrong--I like to think of myself as quite flexible. As an adult, I've lived in five different states and eight different homes. I've had many jobs, completed graduate school, and been in every type of financial situation you can imagine.
That kind of stuff doesn't bother me. The change I'm talking about is the near-tragedy kind. The bus that comes out of nowhere and hits you. The uncontrollable stuff that knocks you right on your ass. That's what I'm not interested in. And that's what I'm currently facing. How about you?
Danielle talked about God being a force of change, although I don't think she meant that He causes horrible things to happen. She said God is a centralizing force, and I couldn't help but think of "The Second Coming," the poem by William Butler Yeats (I'm a total English nerd, so you might as well get used to it). Yeats writes:
I have this picture in my head of a vacuum-like vertical spinning center that's turning and turning, and Yeats says things fly apart from this center. Danielle says that God holds it together even while it's spinning. I'm hoping God's center does, in fact, hold, but some days I'm not so sure.
One of my favorite sculptures at the Nasher also comes to mind: It's called Quantum Cloud XX (tornado), by Antony Gormley:
(www.nashersculpturecenter.org)
There's no real water or boat tie-in here, but I think the visual is pretty much right-on... there is some kind of centralizing force amid the swirling parts of our lives. I wish that force would make the chaos stop, but apparently that's not its job.
A friend of mine recently said that peace can be as strong a force in our lives as chaos. In fact, he said he was hoping that the next bus that hits me is one of tranquility and reconciliation. I don't know if that Peace Bus is really out there, but I'd certainly step out into the street to find it.
If you're like me, hearing all this stuff about change and growth is really annoying. All the seafaring goofiness aside, I'm not a huge fan of uninvited chaos (troubled waters?), and contemplating all the ways in which change is organic to being a Christian is just not what I'm looking for right now.
Probably like many of you, I am one of those people Danielle was talking about when she said a lot of us Journeyers are in transition. For me, the transition was mostly forced upon me, and therefore highly unwelcome. And I'm guessing, then, that this series about rocking the boat (that one was for you, Danielle) will probably be both very appropriate and also quite difficult.
Don't get me wrong--I like to think of myself as quite flexible. As an adult, I've lived in five different states and eight different homes. I've had many jobs, completed graduate school, and been in every type of financial situation you can imagine.
That kind of stuff doesn't bother me. The change I'm talking about is the near-tragedy kind. The bus that comes out of nowhere and hits you. The uncontrollable stuff that knocks you right on your ass. That's what I'm not interested in. And that's what I'm currently facing. How about you?
Danielle talked about God being a force of change, although I don't think she meant that He causes horrible things to happen. She said God is a centralizing force, and I couldn't help but think of "The Second Coming," the poem by William Butler Yeats (I'm a total English nerd, so you might as well get used to it). Yeats writes:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.
I have this picture in my head of a vacuum-like vertical spinning center that's turning and turning, and Yeats says things fly apart from this center. Danielle says that God holds it together even while it's spinning. I'm hoping God's center does, in fact, hold, but some days I'm not so sure.
One of my favorite sculptures at the Nasher also comes to mind: It's called Quantum Cloud XX (tornado), by Antony Gormley:
(www.nashersculpturecenter.org)There's no real water or boat tie-in here, but I think the visual is pretty much right-on... there is some kind of centralizing force amid the swirling parts of our lives. I wish that force would make the chaos stop, but apparently that's not its job.
A friend of mine recently said that peace can be as strong a force in our lives as chaos. In fact, he said he was hoping that the next bus that hits me is one of tranquility and reconciliation. I don't know if that Peace Bus is really out there, but I'd certainly step out into the street to find it.
posted by BU at 8:51 AM
1 Comments:
It's been a few weeks, I realize. But here are some thoughts in response...
Perhaps uninvited chaos is inevitable. Perhaps we are destined to live in a constant state of transition. Perhaps the “already” set into motion a world that is necessarily characterized by tension, as all of creation awaits the “not yet.”
If we broaden the metaphor beyond our own age, we could aptly describe the last two thousand years of human history as “in the boat,” in transition from one side of the sea to the other. Our personal and collective experiences of the last few decades, put in perspective, are but a microcosm of a much larger force of change that continually haunts us, a universe in which something strange is always going on.
I agree with Laura. I’m not much of a fan of uninvited chaos either, and contemplating change is certainly unnerving. But the past five years of my life have conditioned me. I no longer expect life to be easy. I’m constantly looking both directions before crossing the street, not because I expect to avoid being knocked on my ass by the bus, but because I want to at least be able to brace myself for the impact. Somehow I feel that I have more control over the chaos if I can just see it coming. Somehow it hurts less if, in retrospect, I can say I wasn’t caught off guard.
The fundamentalist might say that I lack faith. The atheist would probably call me a pessimist. I prefer to think of myself as a realist. I’ve had the following Walt Whitman poem on my facebook page for several months now. It seems to strike a nice balance between cheesy boat metaphors and the difficult realities of life.
Gliding o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul- not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing.
Having resigned myself to a less than ideal fate I’ve shelved any attempt to try and understand the role of God in it all. My most honest assessments as of late have relegated God to transcendence- detached and uninvolved. Danielle’s thoughts about God holding things together from the center give me a different view, though one that brings me little comfort. I think most of us feel that we are living life on the fringes, that place where the chaos is the greatest, as far away from the center as we can be without being completely thrown from the spinning vortex. Whether he is at the center, holding it together, or beyond the fringes casually observing, God is not as close as I would prefer.
So, here’s to stepping out- looking both ways first, of course. Here’s to bracing ourselves for the impact. Here’s to picking ourselves up off the ground, dusting ourselves off and continuing to walk together across many more dangerous streets. Cheers!
-Matt
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