Uninhibited

It was your typical Sunday at an American megachurch...the kind where orange-vested volunteers in the parking lot directed you to the last available parking spaces, where the sanctuary resembled a hybrid of black-box theater and warehouse, where the worship band's performance was emblazoned on your eyes from multiple screens facing the congregation from every angle, where the music was so loud that my Mom brought earplugs to church (when I told her this was embarrassing, she retorted, "A musician's ears are valuable."). One particular Sunday, the band began a hymn after the sermon. I remember (I was around eleven at the time) looking out at the vast congregation. The melody was lovely, the words profound. My heart sang out in praise.

Everyone remained seated.

I was seized by the urge to stand. I wanted to raise up my hands to God, with my whole body worship Him. My eleven year-old self wondered if it was socially acceptable to just stand up. Maybe everyone would rise to their feet, uninhibited. I pictured it, the powerful motion of a whole sea of people rising up. The evocative image of a mosque full of faithful Muslims all prostrating themselves in united prayer came to mind. We, as Christians in that megachurch, were all assembled in God's name. It seemed almost ridiculous to me that no one moved.  

And then I, too, stayed seated. 

An unresponsive, passive posture.

We use our bodies for all kinds of things, some more honorable than others. Why is it that we suddenly restrain ourselves before God?

People are watching, I always thought. For my part I knew that I stared at people that broke from the stale Wonder Bread norm. I probably sometimes harbored judgmental thoughts in my heart, too. Just like Michal "despised" David in her heart for "leaping and dancing before the Lord." 

I understand that it's not always appropriate to fall face down on the floor of the sanctuary and sob uncontrollably in front of everyone. Sometimes you can't kneel, or dance, or clap, or shout. Sometimes God leads us to stillness. Matthew records Jesus' words: "...when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others...But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret..."  

When I was living in Istanbul, one evening I'd attended a Sufi ceremony of dhikr (remembrance, in the tradition of Islamic mysticism), performed by the iconic whirling dervishes of the Mevlevi order. Grown men with felt hats twirl in billowing long white robes until they achieve a kind of trancelike state, a unity between divine and earthly. The ceremony had clearly become something of a tourist trap. But as I dwelt on its timeworn significance, I came to appreciate the idea of physical movement, of posturing oneself so that God's love and closeness was felt in such an all-consuming way. 

Why should not the outward reflect the inward? 

When I came across this journal entry of Sophie Scholl's, I felt that she'd put expression to my very own feelings. After an April 1942 Easter service at a Catholic Church, Sophie wrote: “Much as I needed that kind of service -- because it’s a real service, not a lecture like you get in a Protestant church -- I’m sure it takes practice or habit to participate fully...My trouble is, however, I’d like to kneel down, as it accords with my feelings, but I’m shy of people seeing, especially people I know. I’d like to bow down before an effigy of God, because you shouldn’t just experience feelings but express them as well, but again I’m too inhibited.”

What if we didn't just experience, but express? 

The deprecating Michal tries to shame David, that Old Testament archetype of worship and praise, for dancing unrestrainedly before God. And he tells her, "...I will make merry before the Lord. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in your eyes." 

We should probably care less about what other people think and more about what God thinks. We should probably stop judging those around us for 'putting their hands together', or for choosing not to. 

Our bodies as well as our minds belong to God. Our physical as well as emotional and spiritual states should be oriented towards Him. 

So use your body to worship Him.

Stand up. 

A New and Old Year

This time last year I was trying to fit more socks into an already over-crowded suitcase as I prepared to fly to Turkey for a semester abroad. Little did I know that I was about to embark not only on a physical journey but such a deeply spiritual, emotional, and intellectual one as well. I can’t think of a better way of putting it other than that I have donned entirely new lenses through which to see the world. 

I also wouldn’t have guessed, that first week of January 2012, that exactly a year later I would be sitting in an apartment in Skopje, Macedonia, writing this. 

Part of me feels like I still haven’t even processed everything that we observed, every lecture we heard, every conversation we participated in, every detail we soaked up with our senses. I hope I carried some of the richness of all these experiences back with me in my suitcase, that most of this information is stashed somewhere carefully in my mind. I am so thankful for every mistake, every tearful night, every fervent journal entry, every adventure, every relationship, every way God has showered me with undeserved love, that has brought me to where I am now -- a very imperfect but blessed twenty year-old, a human being pulsating with the delight of being alive. 

Last night my sister watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I wasn’t paying much attention until one of Paul Varjak’s lines snagged on my thoughts: “...no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.” 

I don’t like running into myself. Most of us probably don’t, if we’re really honest with ourselves. You’d think that when you travel you can hide behind all the activity and newness...but the truth is, sometimes when you decontextualize yourself (when you have little control over your surroundings or cannot avoid certain kinds of interactions) and are unable to insulate yourself with the usual busyness that keeps you from searching your soul, you actually discover how lonely and cold you are when you refuse to let Christ transform you. You might see the world, learn everything there is to know, experience a host of ‘good’ new things... and meanwhile let your integrity atrophy. 

But thankfully strength of character can be exercised like a muscle. If you’ve built it up and worked it daily, its resilience can hold up anywhere and everywhere -- even under strain and weariness. 

You might be in really good shape already, but if not maybe you can think if this as a new kind of New Year’s personal fitness resolution. 

Yesterday, a very delightful Macedonian Orthodox woman showed us the Holy Mother of God Perivleptos Church (which dates back to the 10th century!) in Ohrid, enthusiastically narrating the explanations behind each exquisite and ancient fresco. We came upon a mural of winged creatures depicted in ascending movement on a ladder stretching to the heavens. It was Jacob’s ladder. Painted beneath it were Jacob and an angel, locked in silent conflict. “Some angels are going up the ladder,” we were told. According to Orthodox theology, we all climb up the ladder towards God. We can get very far, clambering up the rungs and doing good things and forgiving each other. But we hold bitterness against each other, we sin, and we have to go back down the ladder again. “See how some of the angels are going the other direction, away from God?” I hadn’t noticed this before in the dimly-lit church, but it was true. “When the apocalypse comes, we want to be found going upward -- even if we are at the bottom of the ladder -- keeping God always before us in the struggle and process of doing good. It is never too late to begin, never too late to start again.” 

I don’t necessarily agree with Orthodox theology, but I found her statement to be very profound. 

When I found the relevant passage in Genesis later I stared and stared at it. 

God says to Jacob: “...Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob wakes up, and says, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.”

God is everyplace. He is beside us in every new year inevitably marked sooner or later with our fumbling mistakes and failed resolutions and, yes, glorious achievements. He is there when you wrestle with Him. He is there wherever you run, and whenever you run into yourself. And I can tell you from experience, you can run into yourself even in someplace like Istanbul, or Amman, or Jerusalem, or Stuttgart, or Skopje. 

C.S. Lewis says it a lot better than I ever could: “If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into...a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.”