I feel old, you guys. It hits me like a snowfall, one tiny flake at a time. I feel it lurking in my back, snapping in my wrists, grinding in my knee. Not all at once, of course. I'm not 80. But just enough. Enough that I'm starting to see these senile snowflakes accumulate on the ground and it's getting slippery and I might fall down. Sometimes pain traps us in our bodies, but this pain oddly separates myself from it. What is this thing that surrounds me, moves around when I want it? Why does it hurt? I feel oddly separated from my body when my knee flares up; I find myself staring it at as I would a flat tire or a check engine light. This home of mine for 25 years that has stretched as I have grown, shook as I laughed, wiped its own tears away, seems foreign and other as it begins to wear down, which is disconcerting, but couldn't we all use a smack of eternal perspective every now and again?
I even feel old as we sit in church and I find myself enjoying the (often) one instrument and two voices that lead those that gather in our building in song. I feel it as I grunt at the "youngins" who say the worship isn't good there when really they mean that their hearts are only open to worshipping to lights and loudness and lots of instruments. Oh darling, don't you know that if you can only worship to the Big and Loud, that perhaps what you're doing isn't worshipping? I have been a part of worship teams with some of the most talented people I know, and I have also shakingly led worship by myself (on a keyboard without a pedal... my personal nightmare). And from the largest to the smallest, worship will happen where hearts are determined to worship.
But here I am lecturing all of you, sounding like an old person.
As my body begins to malfunction due to age, I have also been noticing and wondering what this feeling in my soul has been, but my man Dietrich Bonhoeffer finally put it to words in his Advent book. "Thus Advent can be celebrated only by those whose souls give them no peace, who know that they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come, before which they can only bow in humble timidity."
Those whose souls give them no peace. Crowds of us, wondering why when all the loudness fades to silence and the lights dim, we cannot sit with our souls. Perhaps this is why we must be so busy, why we abandon our responsibilities to "find ourselves," why we need worship that is big and showy, why we are drenched in self-talk and self-love and self-help because maybe, just maybe, we can drown out our restless and uncomfortable selves. It is one thing to feel detached from the body; another entirely terrible situation to feel detached from, running from, one's own heart. Oh, how insignificant, unworthy, unlovable, despicable are our souls--we cannot even sit with them! Oh, how our hearts long to surrender in an abandoned awe at something actually great. We know our own souls and cannot even stand those--is there a soul out there with whom we could bear to sit with in silence? A divine being, perfect in every way, but could He come here, robed in our flesh, so we can touch Him and walk with Him? Could He even penetrate our souls and make them new, make them bearable, make them lovable? Such a fairy tale is etched in our hearts' deepest longings, yet the story has happened, is happening, and it begins with the thrilling reality of Advent.
I even feel old as we sit in church and I find myself enjoying the (often) one instrument and two voices that lead those that gather in our building in song. I feel it as I grunt at the "youngins" who say the worship isn't good there when really they mean that their hearts are only open to worshipping to lights and loudness and lots of instruments. Oh darling, don't you know that if you can only worship to the Big and Loud, that perhaps what you're doing isn't worshipping? I have been a part of worship teams with some of the most talented people I know, and I have also shakingly led worship by myself (on a keyboard without a pedal... my personal nightmare). And from the largest to the smallest, worship will happen where hearts are determined to worship.
But here I am lecturing all of you, sounding like an old person.
As my body begins to malfunction due to age, I have also been noticing and wondering what this feeling in my soul has been, but my man Dietrich Bonhoeffer finally put it to words in his Advent book. "Thus Advent can be celebrated only by those whose souls give them no peace, who know that they are poor and incomplete, and who sense something of the greatness that is supposed to come, before which they can only bow in humble timidity."
Those whose souls give them no peace. Crowds of us, wondering why when all the loudness fades to silence and the lights dim, we cannot sit with our souls. Perhaps this is why we must be so busy, why we abandon our responsibilities to "find ourselves," why we need worship that is big and showy, why we are drenched in self-talk and self-love and self-help because maybe, just maybe, we can drown out our restless and uncomfortable selves. It is one thing to feel detached from the body; another entirely terrible situation to feel detached from, running from, one's own heart. Oh, how insignificant, unworthy, unlovable, despicable are our souls--we cannot even sit with them! Oh, how our hearts long to surrender in an abandoned awe at something actually great. We know our own souls and cannot even stand those--is there a soul out there with whom we could bear to sit with in silence? A divine being, perfect in every way, but could He come here, robed in our flesh, so we can touch Him and walk with Him? Could He even penetrate our souls and make them new, make them bearable, make them lovable? Such a fairy tale is etched in our hearts' deepest longings, yet the story has happened, is happening, and it begins with the thrilling reality of Advent.
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