Recent Ponderings
Saturday, September 24, 2005
So I haven't read a Henri Nouwen book in a while, and when he was mentioned last week Sunday during Jeff's sermon, I felt it was about time to pick him up again. I've had this book, Reaching Out: the Three Movements of the spiritual Life, since the summer after my junior year at Calvin, but I never got past the first couple of pages. Now I know why. God was saving it for such a time as this in my life when I am more prepared for the words that I am reading.
Right now I am just struggling my way through it since it is really challenging my thinking and how I view relationships with other people. Here are just a couple of passages from the book that I just don't know what to do with right now and need some further thought.
There is much mental suffering in our world. But some of it is suffering for the wrong reason because it is born out of the false expectation that we are called to take each other's loneliness away. When our loneliness drives us away from ourselves into the arms of our companions in life, we are, in fact, driving ourselves into excruciating relationships, tiring friendships and suffocating embraces.
...Real openness to each other [in relationships] also means a real closedness, because only he who can hold a secret can safely share his knowledge. When we do not protect with great care our own inner mystery, we will never be able to form community...An intimate relationship between people not only asks for mutual openness but also for mutual respectful protection of each other's uniqueness.
Do not now seek answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
And finally...
The mystery of love is that it protects and respects the aloneness of the other and creates the free space where he can convert his loneliness into a solitude that can be shared. In this solitude we can strengthen each other by mutual respect, by careful consideration of each other's individuality, by an obedient distance from each other's privacy and by a reverent understanding of the sacredness of the human hear. In this solitude we encourage each other to enter into the silence of our innermost being and discover there the voice that calls us beyond the limits of human togetherness to a new communion. In this solitude we can slowly become aware of a presence of him who embraces friends and lovers and offers us the freedom to love each other, because he loved us first.
Posted byMike Fennema posted 5:15 AM 0 comments
Longing for more...
Sunday, September 18, 2005
After today I just feel like the title of my blog. During church today, four things came to mind that I wanted to start doing ranging from going beyond just sunday morning sunday school with a couple of the boys in my class to talking to Carl Smith about Restore Orlando to other things as well. Then my mind starts racing about figuring out schedules and fitting things in and about how everything would work out. I get tired just thinking about it all. How does one actually do everything that they want to do (or think they should be doing).
Right now, I already feel too tired. I'm always draggin' myself out of bed in the morning. Its never to attack the day looking forward to what God has in store. It's always thinking how soon I can get my butt back under the covers. (Don't worry, I'm not depressed, I think I just like sleeping a little too much...blame it on my father, the world's best sleeper).
I think I have the problem of not wanting to miss anything. I want to be so many things and do so many things because I don't want to miss out on something that I should be doing. When I think about it, I know that God won't actually allow me to "miss out" on something he actually wants me to be doing. But still, there just seems so much out there. It seems that so much is required of Christians, and sometimes i feel that I need to have my hand in it all. I need to help the Katrina people, the AIDS orphans in Africa, the starving people in China, the homeless people in Chicago, the billions of people everywhere who don't believe in the gospel. Simply overwhelming.
So what I am trying to get the Lord to pound into this thick skull of mine is that he has gifted me in some areas and I best be using those gifts for his kingdom. I can't do everything, but I can do something. Just don't squander the gifts I have been given. I need to be used where I am, realizing there are other Christians in other places who are called to be used as well and are using there gifts in the same way I need to be using mine. Where I am not serving, someone else is serving, or at least has the opportunity to serve.
Now the question begs to be asked, where can I best be used by God? My answer right now is, start where you are.
Posted byMike Fennema posted 11:30 PM 3 comments
My Woods
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
"Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To see his woods fill up with snow...
The woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
--Robert Frost "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
While at Barnes tonight, I slipped by the poetry section and was caught by Robert Frost. Maybe it was because I watched "Dead Poets Society" not to long ago, or maybe it was the longing for beauty...I don't know, and I'm not one to over-analyze.
Tonight, studying is my miles, and Frost is my snowy wood. Here I sit, taking a short moment to enjoy the beauty amidst the tasks that lay before me. So much to do and so little time to do it makes these rare moments of seeing beauty so special.
And such is my relationship with the Lord...
Doing too often takes the place of being, and performing replaces living. My rare snowy woods are crowded out by my endless miles that seemingly need to be traveled. The tasks will get done. The miles will be traveled. But to what expense? Missing the snowy wood? Hardly seems worth it...
Posted byMike Fennema posted 10:28 PM 0 comments
