Life with Jocelyn

Jocelyn Larsen

walk through the leaves

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hiking at Mt. Rainier National Park last weekend #nofilter

Have you taken a walk through the leaves yet? Consider this your friendly reminder to do so.

(Unless of course you’re one of my southern hemisphere, arctic, equatorial, or Montana(!) readers. Sorry.)

At the risk of sounding like a positive-thinking life coach or ethereal breathing instructor, I just can’t stand the thought of any of us making it through fall and into winter without spending at least twenty minutes sometime at a leisurely pace, tromping through the leaves. It is such a rich sensory experience: leaves crunching, leaves sogging, leaves whisking, sun pouring, sun beating, wind biting, wind bending, rain misting, rain drenching, rain dripping.

I know you’re busy, but please-oh-please just put it in your calendar right now and do it sometime this week. I’ll sleep much better. 😉 You can even take a photo of it and tag me on instagram if that’ll help motivate you.

This season never fails to catch me off guard: that one of the most vivid and splendorous times of our year is brought to us by all sorts of death. Death = beautiful. Ha! There’s an upside down idea to think about while you traipse through the leaves.

(Unless of course you bring your kids and they won’t let you get a quiet thought in edgewise. But still take them; it’ll be better with them, anyway.)

Warmly,
Jocelyn

something better than Good, Fine, Great

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photo by Camille Orgel for Unsplash

 

“How was your weekend?”

“Good.”

“How’s work going?”

“Fine.”

“How’s your friend, so-and-so?”

“Oh, he’s great. Yeah, just great.”

Sounds familiar, right? Isn’t that pretty much the sum of 95% of our in-passing conversations?

I’ll let you in on a little secret: Sometimes, in-passing, I’m flat out lying. And I know you are, too. Sometimes it’s not Good, Fine, or Great. Sometimes it’s Meh, Ugh, and Blech.

Here’s the thing: our problem isn’t our in-passing lying. No, there’s a time and a place for everything, even quick and semi-dishonest answers. Our biggest problem is that we expect life to be perpetually Good, Fine, and Great, with absolutely no Not-So-Great interruptions. We keep working so hard to achieve Good, Fine, Great and we get sad, frustrated, and sometimes despairing when we keep coming up with Meh, Ugh, and Blech instead.

Maybe we’re expecting the wrong things. Maybe God has better things for our lives than just Good, Fine, Great.

Like salvation.

Salvation has taken on a much bigger meaning in the past few years of my studies. (I’ve written about it before at Life with Jocelyn: here and here, for example.) It has been a wondrously freeing and humbly eye-opening experience to learn that I’d been using the word “saved” and thinking of the concept of “salvation” in a completely different way than Jesus and the Bible use that word. Furthermore, I have read and met a widening cloud of Christians who have a very different – much broader, much more ongoing – idea of salvation than I had had. And they got their ideas from the same Bible as me! To think!?

Salvation is the ongoing healing, restoring, rescuing, re-making, re-forming work of God in, of, and through all creation. All of creation is being saved. All of God’s work is salvific. Much of what is already happening in this world that is healing, restoring, rescuing, re-making, re-forming things is God doing God’s salvation work. Count on it. The more hidden and unknown, quiet and humble it is, the more you can be sure of it being so.

You have already in your lifetime received many tastes of the salvation of God, whether or not you’ve given God credit. And the salvation of God is ready today for further tasting, if you will only stick out your tongue. And tomorrow you’ll receive the salvation of God again, if you know what’s good for you.

One more thing: healing, restoring, rescuing, re-making, re-forming are nice sounding words, but when God does them in my life and heart, they are not always nice feeling. In fact, usually they do not feel nice at all. Ideas I’ve clung to for years must be broken down and thrown out. Coping mechanisms I’ve used for decades must be wrenched from my white-knuckled grip. Things I’ve always really treasured must be exposed for the sub-par loves that they are. When I finally experience the freedom that results, that is a nice feeling. But there are many good reasons why the symbol of the salvation work of God is a cross, a death.

This week in The Way of a Pilgrim, first written in Russian by anonymous, I came across the following. A starets, or monk, gave this encouragement to the pilgrim brother whose had encountered a series of very grim life events:

God orders every event for the help and salvation of man; ‘He willeth that all men should be saved.’ Take courage then [in the midst of your many distresses]… Soon you will be rejoicing much more than you are now distressed.

I’d always thought, unthinkingly, that ‘He willeth that all men should be saved,’ meant that God doesn’t want anyone’s soul to go to hell when their body dies. I’d never before connected ‘He willeth that all men should be saved,’ with God’s ordering every event in our lives for our help and salvation. What a refreshing perspective on all of the stuff that goes wrong in life! God wants everyone to be saved. Sometimes salvation can only come about through distresses and Meh, Ugh, Blech. Do not expect only Good, Fine, Great; you will only be disappointed. Expect salvation, knowing that salvation cannot come only through perpetual, uninterrupted Good, Fine, Great.

Next time your weekend is rotten or your workday goes badly or you’re sure your friends don’t like you, just pray to God in your heart: ‘He willeth that all men should be saved.’ God wants you to be saved! God wants to save you. God wants you to experience – today – more and more salvation. God is at work. God is saving you, vigorously and vibrantly!

You don’t have to be happy when your weekend sucks and your work is going nowhere and your friends never text you. You can still feel plenty sad about all of that. But make sure just to be sad. Do not let yourself become sad and despairing. You must not despair: God is at work. God is saving you, vigorously and vibrantly! Maybe God will even use your Meh, Ugh, and Blech life to do so. How then can you despair?

a mature life of faith: living between the poles

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The great sociologist of religion, Max Weber, placed the religious life between the poles of charisma and routine, between the spontaneous, excited outpouring of new life in the spirit and the dogged institutionalization of truth in everyday responsibilities. The mature life of faith is lived between the poles, not around either of them.

Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder, x-xi

 

Between the poles.

Between the poles of charisma and routine.

Between:

Charisma / glory / wow-factor / attractiveness / charm

and

Routine / mundane / dutiful obligations fulfilled

Neither are to become the settled-for, default, gathering pole for my life? Really, neither?

We have all definitely spent seasons of our lives being drawn to one pole or the other, each in their turn. We have fluttered, unwittingly, like moths to a porch light in the dark.

We’ve all had seasons of being drawn to the charisma of a certain leader or teacher, writer or pastor. Sure, their message was mostly(?) good, but if we’re honest it was their good looks, way with words, or the affirmation of our being “right” because we agreed with them that most attracted us to listen.

We’ve all had times of being drawn to the charisma of a fanatical life – whether celebrity or wealthy, skilled or knowledgable, ascetic or missionary – the extraordinary life that amazes and inspires. Sure, our motives were mostly(?) good, but we can’t deny that we craved the attention and accolades, the feeling of being “known” and the large and regular helpings of self-importance.

And: we’ve all had seasons of being drawn to the routine of a regular life with a reliable salary and the comfortable luxury of fast wi-fi. Sure, reliability and comfort and watching The Office reruns every night are mostly(?) good, but they make a small and terrible story as the lived-glory of our lives.

We’ve all had times of being drawn to the routine of memberships and involvements, the security of belonging somewhere that was sure to “count.” Sure, our motives were mostly(?) good, but we can’t deny that we loved the reassurance of being an insider on the inside, and the endless tasks and needs to fulfill that gave us a sense of accomplishment within and significance from without.

So: somewhere in-between? I wonder where that is. I wonder where that will be.

It makes me think of Jesus’ life: a life containing, indeed, a mix of charisma (authoritative preaching and amazing miracles and impassioned calls to repent) and routine (touching sick people and eating dinner with his friends and disappearing to pray alone). But Charisma did not mark his life, nor did Routine. Jesus the God-human was marked by the in-between things, things like: Love, Humility, Self-Control, Salvation. Character things. Lasting things. Things  far more glorious than any charisma, far more reliable than any routine.

Some of the best (albeit invisible) work of our lives will be praying and disciplining ourselves to remain content with the in-between, resisting the undertow that pulls us willy nilly toward the cheap glamour of charisma and back again toward the false security of routine. It will be a fantastic working together of the miracle of God’s grace and of our tenacious self-mastery if we will live our lives marked by the character of the in-between: Love and Humility, Self-Control and Salvation.

Toward which pole do you most naturally gravitate? Why?

What will it take for you to remain in the in-between?

the salvation of loss

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I’ve heard a few stories of loss this week. No deaths or anything that would make the church bulletin prayer list, really — just more of your everyday, behind-the-scenes, run-of-the-mill kinds of loss.

Loss of friendships. Loss of psychological bearings in a new season of life. Loss of inheritance. Loss of what were sunny expectations in a long-term relationship.

I have some of my own stories of loss; in fact, some of them sound a lot like these. I’m sure you have your stories, too.

Whenever I hear stories of loss, of course I feel extremely sad for the person suffering, my heart swells with empathy and I grieve their loss, no matter how small or foreign it may seem to be.

These stories have made me think again about the story of rich, successful, accomplished, self-made Zacchaeus   and how his story is a story of loss. (Scroll down to read the story in its entirety; I pasted the text at the very bottom.) It was voluntary loss, but it was loss nonetheless. Zacchaeus’ life was going so well!! You would have loved it, wanted it, envied it. Upon coming face to face with Jesus, Zacchaeus impulsively stripped himself of his wealth, his success, his status, his honor, his best efforts to save face. Zacchaeus was already “in” in all of the ways that it was good to be “in.” In one fell swoop, he lost it all: “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And instead of empathy for what would prove to be great personal loss to Zacchaeus’ popularity, bank account, security, and personal comfort, Jesus unexpectedly burst out with my favorite line in the story: “Today salvation has come to this house!” Because stories of loss are stories of salvation.

Then, Jesus again: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

*    *    *    *    *    *

We tend to think of the salvation of God as mostly sunny, like a beautiful summer day. We tend to picture the salvation of God as mostly ooey-gooey and delicious, like a brownie. We tend to think of the salvation of God as mostly emotionally triumphant, like a happy-tears-filled altar call.

No, the salvation of God often comes to us in the gloomiest, most bitter, most emotionally defeating places in our lives. The salvation of God often lies on the other side of loss. Whenever you lose something, voluntarily or involuntarily, you have come to the edge of salvation. In your most dismal moments of loss, you have arrived at the precipice of experiencing more of God and God’s salvific way of things.

Because stories of loss are stories of salvation.

In whatever areas of your life you hear yourself saying, “I feel so lost…” those are precisely the areas in which God is in the very midst – saving, restoring, healing, transforming: salvation. In whatever areas of your life you sense loneliness or hurt or grief or loss, those are precisely the areas in which God is inviting you to walk with him through the difficult mess and into newer, fresher, even more life-giving life: Eternal Life.

It is exactly in those lost places that the Son of Man comes to seek and save you. It is perhaps only when you are willing and ready to admit that you are, indeed, utterly and self-hopelessly lost that the Son of Man is able to seek and save you.

Don’t get me wrong: even if you let your loss lead you to the salvation of God, the salvation of God will not make you feel immediately, permanently sunny. You will still have a lot of muck through which to walk. (I mean, at the very least, your loves will need re-ordering, your vices will need confessing, and your pride will need humiliating.) Yes, the loss will still sting. In fact, the salvation of God may not alleviate any of the sting of the loss. Ever. But if you choose to let your losses lead you to the vast landscape of the salvation of God, you can be sure of a few things: that you will be with God (even if you can’t feel it) and that God will become more known to you (over time) and you will eventually benefit from knowing God more (and that will probably make you least a little bit happy).

Today you lost your inheritance? “Oh, how great! Today salvation has come to you!” Today you suffer a loss of psychological bearings in a new season of life? “Oh, how great! Today salvation has come to you!” Today you’ve lost another friendship? “Oh, how great! Today salvation has come to you!” Today you seem to have lost your sunny expectations in a long-term, established relationship? “Oh, how great! Today salvation has come to you!”

Loss leads to salvation? It’s an upside down world with Jesus, again, friends.

 

 

 

Luke 19: Zacchaeus’ Loss

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

An open prayer to God-Who-Shows-Favor

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This may come as a surprise to you (I know it definitely has to me!), but the longer I walk down the path toward God, the more drawn I am to already-written prayers. I find such ease in just reading, such comfort in finding my own feelings and thoughts already amply expressed, such unity in knowing that these are all prayers God has already fielded from so many holy mouths. I also find tremendous freedom of focus, having only to coax my heart into alignment with the words rather than to invent the words with my brain and coax my heart into alignment.

Today I offer you a prayer. I suppose that you could consider it an open prayer, along the lines of the open letter which is a cultural norm in our day. It is both a prayer for your sake and a prayer for your employ. I mean, I have already prayed it to God on your behalf and now I share it with you as a prayer that you may read to God on behalf of yourself and others. Don’t just read it. Try praying it.

God-Who-Shows-Favor:

I imagine your favor as being always in my periphery, as if you inhabit every corner of my home, my workplace, my neighborhood, my city, our world. You are too humble to appear front and center in every frame of my life. You prefer to sit at my side, to wait in the wings, to condescend yourself into a position of steady support. And yours is not the shallow support of a cheerleader – a baseless, arbitrary romance toward one team and a baseless, arbitrary hatred toward the other. No, yours is a deep and particular support for however and whatever leads ultimately to the Best Good for all. Couched in Wisdom. Founded in Reality.

I imagine turning occasionally to glimpse you and that whenever our eyes meet you are wearing a broadly goofy grin, nearly beside yourself with excitement just to be thought of and to have caught my attention for a moment. “Just admiring you,” you say. The smile takes over your entire face. It is almost an ugly smile, it is so robust. It makes me a bit uncomfortable. Anyone who has seemed to like me so much has always had ulterior motives. But there is something different about this grin. You seem simply, blissfully not to be aware of the social graces that keep most of us from expressing our uninhibited enthusiasm for whatever, whomever we love. It occurs to me that you are exactly like a child in this way. I cannot help it – a laugh bursts from my throat and out my mouth. It sounds fairly like a guffaw. I guess it is just that your face so caught me off guard. It is so unabashedly sincere, so indescribably splendid, and yet so innocently light-hearted. For a moment I am embarrassed at the abruptness of my laugh; it must have seemed fairly rude, to laugh essentially in your face. But you show no signs of embarrassment, even on my behalf. Social graces drown in the wake of instinct — of spontaneous reaction to life as it comes to you. 

And so: what else could I do? In the face to so much emanating favor, and that directed so intently, so unobligatorily… toward me.The only thing to do was: laugh.

I suppose that it was my receipt of your favor.

I suppose that it was your receipt for your favor.

I think it might have been all you wanted.

Maybe you CAN be and have all that you want…

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…if you let God have influence over what it is that you want.

I don’t think I’m alone in my insatiable desire for more.

I think all of us have some discontentment, idealism, or longing — whatever you want to call it. We just have it for different things. Some of us can’t get enough money to buy stuff; others can’t get enough money for its sense of security. Some of us can’t get enough control/order over our lives; others can never have enough of the free whimsy that adventure offers. Some of us can’t get enough of the comfort of food and drink; others can never be disciplined enough, exercise enough, or get thin enough.

A lot of us want all of the above!

And of course, at some level, all of us want less of the negative things: our anxieties, our anger, the brokenness in our relationships.

I feel frustrated often by all of the things I want that I can’t seem to get. I often say to myself / God things like:

Why can’t I just change myself for good?

Why do other people seem to have blessed and easy lives while I struggle?

Why won’t my relationships heal themselves once and for all?

Why is this always so difficult?

Then, I had an idea:

Maybe the only way to get what I want is to change what I want.

Maybe the best way out of some of these frustrations is to submit my wants to God, asking not for the stuff to satiate me, but for a change in my expectations, deep contentment with what I already have, and Love to cover over it all.

Maybe some of the things I want seem benign and Good to me, but maybe they are actually self-serving and therefore not desires that God can get behind like I’d expected.

Maybe my discontentment is actually mostly greed.

Maybe my idealism is actually a lot of pride.

Maybe my longing is actually quite a bit of envy.

Maybe my discontentment, idealism, and longing does not need to be satiated, but rather utterly transformed.

Maybe the only way to get what we want is to change what we want. And for that, we’ll definitely need God.

God, change what we want so that we can be and have all that we want to be and have, according to Your Best Good for us in every way. We trust you. Amen.

I need pastoring.

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Yes, I need pastoring.

But it’s not what you think.

First, let me say that I think overall we’ve done a grave disservice to the title and meaning of “pastor.” Because when I say “pastor,” don’t you automatically only think of people who work at church buildings and deliver sermons on Sunday mornings??

It’s sad, if you think about it.

We almost always use “pastor” as a noun only, as a label, as a title: “Pastor So-and-So of Such-and-Such Church.” It may certainly be used as a noun, but it is also a verb! All of us can and do pastor each other all the time — incidentally, mostly outside of church buildings, where the largest majority of pastoring is needed since most of us spend 166 hours of our week outside of church.

Also, unfortunately, we’ve reserved the title of “pastor” only for those who have jumped through our denominationally-imposed standards of education and vocational equipping.

By hoarding the title for the elite few, we’ve accidentally turned those few humans into the only living spiritual heroes or heroines we know. The poor things! What infinite pressure this accidentally puts on them! After all, they are just humans, too. They go back and forth between work and home every day, just like the rest of us, figuring out how to live and move and have their being in Christ. Their marriages are messy, just like ours. Their kids struggle within and without, just like ours. They don’t feel like praying and reading the Bible every goddamn day, just like the rest of us.

And, by hoarding the title for the elite few, oh how we miss out on the quiet pastors and pastoras among us who do at least as much if not more of the waiting on, serving, overseeing, and care taking of us day in and day out. (These italicized words are the what the Greek words for “pastor” have as their meaning and undertones.)

No, when I say I need pastoring, I have something else in mind. It’s not less than you think, it’s more. Way more.

I need way more than one person with the title of “pastor” that I see from a distance for a couple of hours one morning per week. I need a whole team of pastors popping in and out of my every day life, each with different gifts, insight, and help.

And I need way more than to hear a once-per-week sermon. I need to learn to hear the sermons that are floating in and around and all about my life constantly, preaching Grace and Truth and Love on the fly, in the moment, exactly when I’m in greatest need of pastoring, whether I know it or not.

Yes, we all need pastoring. And all of us are invited into the vast work of gently pastoring one another every day of the week.

Last week we went to the sea for a few days with dear friends. We stayed in the same big house together with all our kids. We ate together, played games together, played in the sand together, watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids together, watched the rain together. And we pastored each other. (Though none of us have “pastor” as our regular job title.) Their baby was pretty sick and had a few hours off and on of being really fussy. We took turns holding the baby, pastoring the baby, giving each other breaks from the baby, inventing ways to keep the baby happy. Also, my kids are really loud. They took them down to the beach one afternoon so that I could actually take a nap! Then, one afternoon, two of the adults got in a fight over some legitimately difficult circumstances. Together, all four adults listened, coached, raised our voices, asked questions, affirmed, fought some more, and patiently pastored us all together to greater ways of seeing and understanding.

Though it wasn’t exactly happy and comfortable in the moment, in the end I was so grateful for the fussy baby and the loud kids. I guess I was just mostly so glad for us — that we’d created a culture where we could take turns sacrificing our own needs and agendas for the sake of each other.

Though it wasn’t exactly happy and comfortable in the moment, in the end I was so grateful for the fight. I guess I was just mostly so proud of us — that we’d created a culture where two people could have a very normal fight in front of each other and we could all work through it in a healthy way that led to resolution and actually even stronger relationships between us all.

We all need pastoring, every day. And we all need to offer our Love and our gifts to pastor alongside the people around us, every day. Because we need pastoring pastors everywhere, every day: care giving, overseeing, teaching, preaching, sermonizing, serving, being the humble spiritual heroes and heroines we need in a thousand different ways. We are all invited to learn the care-full, humble, messy, servant’s work of self-sacrificially pastoring one another in all of the moments of our lives, everywhere we go.

Will you let yourself be pastored? Will you humbly pastor the people around you?

 

Daily Strength for Daily Needs

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I have developed a bit of a habit of beginning my work day with just a few minutes of quiet. The more difficult my work, the more consistent I seem to be. Hm. Anyway, the few minutes of quiet are usually composed of something like read-praying, or pray-reading. (I’m not sure which.) I find myself turning more and more to pre-written prayers that I can borrow as my own prayers. These prayers are especially great for when my brain is too foggy or too famished or too fraught with the big needs of my little life to come up on my own with very intelligent or genuine prayers. So, pretty much every day. It’s a good thing for me that Christ-followers have been writing down their prayers for thousands of years so that I can lean on them.

I have a few sources from which I read often, and I want to mention one to you today because I have found it to be consistently just what I need:

  1. brief and simple – not too much
  2. deep and profound – not too little, it whisks me quickly into the Reality of God without being smarmy or sentimental
  3. a great introduction to new-to-me heroes of Faith, Hope, and Love – you know – a few in the surrounding cloud of witnessing “saints,” whether officially canonized or not

And the book is: Daily Strength for Daily Needs, collected by Mary W. Tileston. It is so old that:

  1. at some point I found an electronic version of it for free on the internet, though I now own a hard copy since I found it fairly easily at a used bookstore
  2. the English is old, but I almost prefer it because it makes me pay attention; I feel like you could easily transcribe it in your head if the Thees and Thous are a bit too much for you

Each daily reading consists of three short entries, usually one Scripture, one poem or song, and one paragraph/prayer. Here is what I read today:

——

Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

MATTHEW vi. 32

 

All as God wills, who wisely heeds

To give or to withhold;

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told.

J. G. WHITTIER

 

LORD, I know not what I ought to ask of Thee; Thou only knowest what I need, Thou loves me better than I know how to love myself. O Father! give to Thy child that which he himself knows not how to ask. I dare not ask either for crosses or consolations; I simply present myself before Thee; I open my heart to Thee. Behold my needs which I know not myself; see, and do according to Thy tender mercy. Smite, or heal; depress me, or raise me up; I adore all Thy purposes without knowing them; I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice; I yield myself to Thee; I would have no other desire than to accomplish Thy will. Teach me to pray; pray Thyself in me.

FRANCOIS DE LA MOTHE FENELON

——

Surely you do not need my commentary on that, but here it is anyway: just a few phrases that hummed louder than the rest and that now will stream through the back of my consciousness as I do my inward, outward, and upward Work today:

 

And knoweth more of all my needs

Than all my prayers have told…

…I simply present myself before Thee…

…I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice…

…pray Thyself in me…

 

The entire mound that is my accumulated, prayed needs – filling many journals and many desperate prattling ons, I can assure you – is a tiny bump compared to the vast stack of my actual needs that are preserved, treasured, and pondered in the mind and heart of God. All that is mine to do is to show up to God, to present myself to God, to be sure that I am present and attentive if and when God’s Voice wavers in my general or specific direction. Even Prayer is not wholly mine to which to attend to — God prays in me.* A silent offering of myself is enough Prayer even for God.

A good way to start my work day, don’t you think? 😉

Love, JRL

 

*PS. To read more about this – the idea of God praying in you – get your hands on something, anything written by Maria Boulding – it is a stunning and recurring theme of hers.

my paraphrase: philippians 2:12-13

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Wrestle, exercise, and go to practice every day to experience more and more what it means to let God restore every aspect of your being. Don’t ever get smug or over-confident toward God; just let God keep energizing you to focus on living congruently (with your motivations and actions in increasing alignment), trusting only in the simple fact of God’s goodwill toward humankind.