lent sucks.

i should first say that my personality SUCKS. i am a feeler. big time. i get completely caught up and consumed by all things emotive. a dead bug can bring me to a severe existential crisis at any given moment. imagine the effects a deadening relationship or the loss of a loved one or a severing of ties for any given reason may have on a person such as myself. further, i am an all or nothing person. when i am committed to a value, a thought, a band, a relationship, a job...i am all in. my whole being is consumed in any given situation. which also means, when i am done i am DONE...with a job, with school, with a living siutation, etc - but never on people. i can never escape this one. commitment wins, along with my hypersensitive emotions and attachments. for all of these reasons mentioned, i am FUCKED.

when you put all of your time and energy into something for a period of time, it becomes impossible for someone like me to get out. this has been an intense struggle my whole life. i make no clean breaks. instead, i deeply entangle myself in situations and when they must end, there is a very painful and stretching process of being torn away against my will. and when i am cut loose, i often feel as though i am left with nothing, because i all too easily give up everything.

i have been thinking/struggling with these things a lot lately. with loss and with the hyper-emotive person i somehow became. there is really no way for me to engage the world healthily given these two realities. i am overcome and i am hopeless. i have been there too many times. and so it seems i must allow god to step in. there really is not much more to lose, so i have been trying to make some room for god to work in the midst of my fears and my sorrows and my complete hopelessness.

i suppose god really does give a shit, because i have felt peace in a place i didnt know it could exist since i have invited god back into my life. mainly through my personal readings and the readings of the church over this last weekend.

at cota last night we heard the gospel text from john 2:13-22:

"The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken."

i heard this passage as a metaphor for where my life is at right now, appropriately. since i moved to seattle, i have been sitting in a temple that i have been constructing over the course of months. looking back, i am just as foolish as the money changers. the money changers sat around going about their business and most likely not thinking anything was wrong. but actually they were harboring a place of lies and deceit and ugliness. there is simply no getting around that, even if (as i believe) the money changers didnt actually intend on defiling the holy temple. here jesus steps in and shows them exactly what it is they have been involved in. and he calls them to destroy it. just like that. my argument to god over destroying any piece of my life is the same. "but...no...i cant...i dont know how...i have been doing this for so long...and i know nothing else but this...even if it is a little distorted...you cant mean it...tear it down?? really?? sigh."

i resent god for being so harsh and not offering an easier alternative. and for not informing me long ago that the temple would be destroyed eventually...i would not have invested so much had i known. but this is how it is. and i can be pissed about it and refuse to place myself in such vulnerable positions any longer...or i can trust that jesus will rebuild what he has called us to tear down.

"i must never, at any moment, presume to say that there is no way out for god because i cannot see any. for it is despair and presumption to confuse one's pittance of imagination with the possibility over which god disposes." soren kierkegaard.

my fears and my sorrow often block imagination and faith. more often than not, i do not actually believe in "better days" or a "light at the end of the tunnel" or any of those things. even if i did, they do not in any way make up for the shit we are forced to live through or the messes we find ourselves in when we had good intentions all along. so i am not a hopeful person. not naturally, anyway.

but i can believe in possibility. and i can be thankful that when jesus said he would raise the temple up in three days, he did more than build another structure which would be inhabited by the same evil. instead, the body of jesus was raised up; beautiful and dynamic and life-giving. i must believe in this possibility for my life and the life of the world, despite all that is seen and unseen and despite what i know and what is in my head.

i hope that in these days i may continually look to jesus as a way of knowing it is never the end. beautiful beautiful things come up from the ground, particularly when we are willing to tear down what we have already made a mess of anyway.

so here is to lent. and the tearing down and letting go and giving up of what keeps us from life, all in order to make room for wonderful possibility.