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[savannahvdimarco]

A Thousand Questions (and counting!) about the Bible: A Journal Entry from the Road to Emmaus

I cannot read my Bible anymore--not alone in a coffee shop, pages flipped open, flaunting copious margin notes on Ephesians in hopes that a dashing Christian bachelor might notice my annotational zeal. (LOL— I literally used to think this way. Cue the Ryan Gosling “Hey Christian Girl” memes. Yes, maximally embarrassing to admit. PS: This is not at all to disparage anyone who reads their Bible alone or in a coffee shop— I’m simply sharing vignettes from my own life aha.) From 2007 onward, I brought my Bible everywhere: to youth camps, family holidays, and even in my bicycle basket on long cycle rides. A good evangelical Protestant, I knew I needed to be “in the Word every day.” It wasn’t until this year, 2019, that I left my Bible in New Haven on a brief trip to DC. I hadn’t, and have not, left my Bible behind entirely (e.g. relegated it to my past; never to be read again,) but something had changed: I had questions now.

Since 2017, I’ve felt I’ve come to a sort of impasse, and I’ve often ached to return to a less complicated view of the Bible. I’ve envied my friends who spend morning after quiet morning tucked into Philippians, nodding, praying, and launching into the day with the untroubled axiom to “not worry about anything.” That’s a beautiful practice for many, and I still recite that verse to myself. Indeed, I don’t worry when I open the Bible—but I do re-open a thousand questions each time I unfold the book’s spine.

I write this today because the Bible’s questions remain ‘live questions’ for me. Even after a year in divinity school, I’ve stumbled into more befuddlement than clarity. Each time I open my Bible, I cannot help but wonder: what role is Scripture meant to take in the Christian life? Should Scripture be read individually, communally, or both? Is reading the Bible alone as bizarre as taking communion alone? Is Scripture meant for community? When it comes to adjectival descriptors about the Bible, what do ‘inerrancy,’ ‘perfection,’ and ‘holiness’ mean to me; to Christian communities across time and space; and to Christians today? Does acknowledging that a Bible book is very likely pseudepigraphic mean that I cannot call it ‘inerrant?’ What about the parts that seem anti-Semitic, and have been used to justify anti-Semitic atrocities? Should I expurgate any parts which seem misogynistic, unloving toward LGBTQI+ folks, or violent? Where do midrashic traditions fit in? Imagination? Art? Humor? Social justice? Historical criticism? Non-resistance? Environmental concerns? Is this Bible simply a multi-genre compilation of texts considered sacred by different Jewish and Christian faith communities in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean? What does it mean to trust that the Holy Spirit oversaw its canonization and transmission? What about apocryphal books, and the eastern canon? The Ethiopic canon? What does it mean to read Scripture alongside spiritual experience and Christian traditions, rather than reading Scripture as the primary epistemic locus? (Richard Rohr even recommends prioritizing experience above the other two.) Why should the Christian’s faith be one of ‘sola scriptura’ when God reveals Godself in communion, baptism, the sun, the wind, music, dance, laughter, earnest intellectual debate, childbirth, wine, charity, poetry, and life together?

This is the first blog I’ve written whilst truly answerless. Usually I wait until months of conversations, study, dreaming, agony, and prayer—by divine grace aha—have culminated in a sort of crescendo before I’ll even sketch a blogpost. This time, I have only inklings of what might come next. I feel in my bones that I’m on a journey; that I’m, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin writes, “in suspense and incomplete.” 

I also realize that this post will likely alienate readers on both sides of ‘the aisle.’ One group might respond, ‘of course Scripture is complicated...how on earth has it taken you decades to realize that?!,’ and others may rush to interceding for me straightaway, ‘O Lord, she has lost her faith.’ I understand both perspectives (and please do pray for me! hah---I love prayer.) That being said, I want to invite you all to set out on this journey with me.

We live, move, read, laugh, eat, and drink within a mystery. In this life, and in the Bible, Christ is hidden and revealed all at once. Both are a “luminous darkness,” to borrow a phrase from Thomas Merton, and a “bright abyss” (Christian Wiman.) Though I struggle to read the Bible now, I trust that the Holy Spirit will guide me toward a new understanding of Scripture and its place in human life together. And so begins a quest! Yet even as I embark on a journey of reckoning with tricky questions, I hold to this great mystery: Christ is with us in disguise as we walk together on the road to Emmaus. Rather than focusing single-mindedly on arriving at answers (‘the destination,’) what if we gave ourselves up to the road, and those traveling with us?

Where might we find Christ hidden in Scripture, questions, and in human life?

“Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.  As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them;  but they were kept from recognizing him.

He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him,and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” Luke 24:14-17, 28-32

Cheers to the journey!

Love, Savannah

[savannahvdimarco]

What I Learned In My First Term in Div School: Life in the Musterion

“Whatever is unsure is possible, and life is bigger than flesh. Beyond reach of thought, let imagination figure.” – Wendell Berry 

For the last couple months, I’ve been absolutely taken with the Greek word μυστήριον. The word has been a great help to me during my first term at YDS, and after facing months of epistemological anxiety, I’ve come to fall in love with the musterion itself. This blog post is wee attempt to share the word’s scriptural background and point to its tremendous bearing on our theological questions today. Here we go!

So, what is the ‘musterion?’

Between the gospels, the epistles, and the book of Revelation, canonical New Testament writers mention ‘mystery’ 27 times. Included among these is Mark, who writes about the musterion in his Parable of the Sower account. In this passage, after giving a cryptic teaching about sowing, weeds, and thorns to a large group, Jesus meets inside a home with His followers, who ask about the parables’ meaning. Rather than answering the question outright, Jesus responds: “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything come in parables.” Though many translations write “secret,” Mark uses the Greek word musterion, which implies both secret and mystery. In the following verses’ fuller answer, it is as if Jesus says, ‘Seeds grow fully on good soil. The word spoken to you contains greater mysteries than you could ever imagine about the Kingdom of God. You can’t see everything with your eyes now, because it’s a secret seed buried deep within you—but you can see the love and justice that sprouts up from a life filled with the word and mystery of my Kingdom. You won’t understand it all, but it will grow in you and around you, like seed on good soil, for all who receive my teaching.’ For Jesus’ followers, the mystery of God’s Kingdom is a gift that grows within them and in the world around them.

Jesus’ disciples sensed elements of God’s Kingdom rising around them—like seeds slowly beginning to grow. Jesus healed those with long-term illnesses, liberated those tormented by demons, and honored one of the community’s poorest members. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, free the captives, and show those around Him how to love. Perhaps the disciples could feel their own hearts changing; slowly but surely becoming more forgiving, less resentful, more grateful, and more aware of the world’s systematic injustices. In these ways, the Kingdom of God seemed present, but it is still mysterious. It was (and is) still growing. There is so much more to come. For now, the world’s spiritual changes remain a mystery. Who can say how seeds grow? It is not until the ‘next chapter’—when heaven comes to earth—that we will find out what the mystery is. On that day, we will see the seeds’ full growth.  

Luke writes that a child is born to us, “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord,” and Mark writes that a mystery is given to us. The gifts are more intimately related than we have ever known. 

If we hold Jesus, we hold these mysteries, too.

What does this mean for us today?

For many of us, the story of Jesus is so familiar that we never think about the bright, wondrous mysteries woven within it. As such, we scramble to clarify every theological grey-area (and there are many.) I propose that Christ calls us to allow our thoughts, instead, to be animated by the awe-struck joy and humility which comes from not fully knowing, yet holding, the mystery of the Kingdom of God. The sacraments are an example. We hold the communion bread without ever knowing its total significance. Simone Weil writes of the Eucharist, “He must be more completely present in a morsel of consecrated bread. His presence is more complete in asmuch as it is more secret.” Who can fully comprehend the wondrous, mysterious secret of communion? How can you or I understand the mystery of God’s great Kingdom planted deep within us? 

We don’t need to have all the answers. In fact, a cosmological cipher is “a vain fiction and chimera.” (A. Conway) Jesus invites us to move beyond understanding; to open our eyes to the divine secrets unfolding around us, and to live a life of love within God’s great mystery. Spring is near, and the Kingdom of God is the seed planted within you.

_________________________________________________________________

Bibliography  1. Boring, Eugene M. Mark: A Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.; 2. Bowker, John W. "Mystery and Parable: Mark Iv. 1—20." The Journal of Theological Studies, New Series, 25, no. 2 (1974): 300-17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23958404.; 3. Brown, R.E. The Semitic background of the term "mystery" in the New Testament. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1968.; 4. Collins, Adela Yarbro. Mark. Edited by Harold W. Attridge. Hermeneia Commentaries. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007.; 5. Collins, Adela Yarbro. "Messianic Secret and the Gospel of Mark: Secrecy in Jewish Apocalypticism, the Hellenistic Mystery Religions, and Magic." In Rending the Veil: Concealment and Secrecy in the History of Religions, by Elliot R. Wolfson, 11-30. New York, NY: Seven Bridges Press, 1999.; 6. Evans, Craig A. "A note on the function of Isaiah, VI, 9-10 in Mark, IV." Revue Biblique (1946-) 88, no. 2 (1981): 234-35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44088534.; 7. Lane, William L. The Gospel according to Mark; the English text with introduction, exposition, and notes. New International Commentaries on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974.; 8. Marcus, Joel. "Mark 4:10-12 and Marcan Epistemology." Journal of Biblical Literature,103, no. 4 (1984): 557-74. doi:10.2307/3260467.; 9. Marcus, Joel. Mark 1-8. Vol. 1 of Mark. AB 27. Anchor Bible Series. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1964.; 10. Marcus, Joel. The Mystery of the Kingdom of God. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1986.; 11. Moule, C.F.D. “Mystery.” Pages 479–481 in vol. 3 of The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Edited by George A. Buttrick. 4 vols. New York, NY: Abingdon Press, 1962.; 12. Mowry, L. “Parable.” Pages 649–654 in vol. 3 of The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Edited by George A. Buttrick. 4 vols. New York, NY: Abingdon Press, 1962.; 13. Williams, James G. Gospel against Parable: Mark’s Language of Mystery. Decatur, GA: Almond, 1985.; 14. Schiffman, Lawrence H. "Mysteries." In Qumran Cave 4, vol. 15: Sapiential Texts, Part 1 (DJD 20), by Torleif Elgvin, et. al. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1997.; 15. Schiffman, Lawrence H. Reclaiming the Dead Sea scrolls: the history of Judaism, the background of Christianity, the lost library of Qumran. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1994; 16. Eusebius. Eusebius: The Church History. Translated by Paul L. Maier. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1999.; 17. Irenaeus, and Aeterna Press. Irenaeus Against Heresies. London, UK: Aeterna Press, 2016.

[savannahvdimarco]

One Year in the Mad World of Manhattan

“We were the first that ever burst / into that silent sea” – S. Coleridge

There is a mural on the ceiling of Stephen Schwartzman’s third-floor McGraw Rotunda. Visitors enter the building’s first-floor Astor Hall at Fifth Avenue: in autumn, climbing leaf-lined steps to reach tall bronze doors decorated in Beaux-Arts style; in winter, passing between Lady Astor and Lord Lenox, handsome twin lions wreathed in Norwood Green Spruce; and in summertime or spring, rounding the building’s corner at 42nd Street, so as not to miss Bryant Park in its mid-August slumber or late-April bloom. White marble stretches across the library’s façade and interior walls, floors, and staircases leading to the research rooms, catalog room, and upper rotunda.

The rotunda’s mural, one of the library’s three large-scale ceiling paintings, is a rendering of the Promethean myth. Prometheus—the central figure—suspended in heavenly firmament, shields his face with his left arm and holds golden flame in his right. Below the clouds on either side, men’s necks and limbs reach upward while their faces search below. Hesiod tells us that Prometheus transgressed Zeus’ edict by carrying the gift of fire to humankind. When Zeus learned what Prometheus had done, he sentenced him to eternal torture in Tartarus. The scene, contained in golden-leaf oval frame, evokes an ancient question— whether the divine might give provisions to humankind at great cost to itself.

I fell fast for the New York Public Library, and often frequented the research rooms to escape Manhattan’s madness. The library’s stacks embraced me during a several-month theological crisis, and I read Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and Rowan Williams for the first time on borrowed copies at Stephen Schwartzman’s research desks.

I write about the library tonight as a sort of ode to my token New York City year. The library, like Central Park, the Met, Hamilton Heights, Riverside Park and Columbus Circle—every borough and side-street—all New York’s interior spaces and parks had an effect on me beyond a heightened appreciation for art, architecture, and culture. The city worked a quietude in me, because I could not measure it: I could not describe it, taxonomize it, or make a single general statement about its fabric or character. Manhattan left me no other choice but to learn from and about the people and places around me moment-by-moment and chance-meeting-by-chance-meeting. It welcomed an open disposition. New York asked for a listening ear, and I was invited to humble myself beneath it if I hoped to learn what it had to teach me.

Initially ‘learning New York’ came in the form of several disquieting realizations that coincided all-too-closely with ‘learning myself.’ After only one week commuting from West Harlem to South Ferry, I discovered my bitter frustration for crowded subway cars, and after catching myself eye-rolling and death-glaring, I realized that my impatient, grumpy heart needed a whole-lotta-change. I also learned the narrowness of my life experience. Before moving to New York, I had never lived in a neighborhood that was not predominantly white, I had never visited a Jewish synagogue, I had never attended a gala, I had never lived off a street with signs half-Spanish and half-English, I had never tried poké, I had never been to Wall Street, and even after 365 days spent in the city, I still lacked real imagination for the everyday lives of the thousands of “humans of New York” who shuffled across the pavement beside me at Times Square.

The sheer amount of languages spoken, religious traditions practiced, maxims painted on pavement, ballads sung near train platforms, and anecdotes recounted was baffling. On a single day traveling between New York and New Orleans, I met a young man who told me, “[a Bangladeshi party] tried to kill me twice. I worked in textiles in Dhaka. My uncle owns a plastic bag factory. I’ll start a business and do exports. I call my mom everyday…see?,” another began to describe his time in the city, “so I came out here for six months…,” and a woman recalled fleeing from Hurricane Katrina several years back, “we evacuated to Baton Rouge…my mom had a bad dream and got a bad feeling. I went to LSU and they took the bus to Colorado Springs. They’re not coming back.”

The city taught me to listen. New York complicated by worldview—in the best way. At the same time my theological views began to deconstruct, I was led to let go of my preconceived notions on psychology, family, career, language, and human life. Stepping outside my door in New York City each morning ‘did the trick.’  Though letting schematics fall to the ground is unsettling and often painful, learning to listen to people in real, lived-out moments of quirkiness, glowing talent, suffering, joy, quick wit, anxiety, confusion, grief, and the endless interwoven, contradictory, paradoxical sensations in-between is close to the heart of God. New York’s people and Stephen Schwartzman’s books left me with more questions than answers, but I am thankful. I do not want the truth suspended in the ether. I want the Truth that catches the subway at 3 AM, sips Four Hands from Hamilton Discount Wine & Liquor, meets us in our questions, and makes home on the 86th Street stairs with the man who wails on the harmonica and writes “Anything Helps.” Emmanuel, God with us—these are your depths.

“Love has a speed, and it is a slow speed. The average human walks at about three miles per hour. I leave you with: “Three mile an hour God.” – Dr. John Swinton, in reference to the book by author Kosuke Koyama

Harlem: 6 pm

The first blood-hot evening On Amsterdam Ave You, hook-crossing the wind Laughing in hard bouts Circled by música para bailar And screechy bumps Scooter wheels on pavement Eternal glory through song

I never fell once For subterranean fields Lamp-lit Sheoul Horsebacked knights Jesting, gambling Armed Even still

One foot set forward, clay eyeliner-set-thick Treasure troves Outlived you And so we must Write something new The sea will give up her dead Pages plunged in Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, Pacific— Ink having run

Will vine-spiraled oak, Strained glass, Balustrades, balconies, Arched-cloisters remain? In heaven’s halls I am searching for the piece On transience And tragedy.

Brooklyn, 2 AM

The soul’s slow night Rose dark over Brooklyn Running hard Past glowing girls with Dew-stained cheeks, High moon beaming, and bright guitar Riffs spilling into the streets

Manhattan’s doors swing to-and-fro; She stretches, yawns, spreads Like a pop-up book across the dozing lawns by day And floor-sixty galas by night Across the bridge, Watch the flickering skyline

Breathing, barely Making myself breathe For all who are lost in it and cannot live alone.

[savannahvdimarco]

Sand slips swiftly To platitudes: A simple heart A blank lined page Sola scriptura “Come, follow me.” 

Chart the middle course at full speed Septimus cried Terrible beauty Vignettes I offer Signed At arm’s-length

No, I do not want Want to look in- to your mirror Bound and loosed A theatre cold-stoned Quiet.

So we return Each day we return to Dig up and bury Dig up and bury           Dig up and bury All we cannot hold.                                                                                    

[savannahvdimarco]

Infinity times infinity // let there be light

[Lyric: Sleeping at last]

[Image layer two: NASA]

East Village, Manhattan 

[savannahvdimarco]

Give me not gold, but the white-tipped sea

Kind pleasantries, loquacious lett'rings

Sapphire stained bold epistles, stuff

Of miles-wide caverns, stretching on, on,

Out to the bit where trench curtails,

Contains, a sort of a void. Θάλαττα! θάλαττα!

The sea! The sea! Oh, yes, for only

Once having seen it, I turned the world grey.

Following neither folly nor wisdom’s

Lead- wilfulness woven in solit'ry sleep.

Yet seventy miles nigh, or seventy

Leagues low, as Orion hastens to

Fell a stag made of stars, the four

Zephyrs in tow, a sure sound of sweeping-

The centrifugal centre of motion-

Dusts a marble floor. At the selfsame

Moment- (for you know, it simply

Unfailingly is)- wind swept my needle

Teet-tottering; starboard, due north.

[savannahvdimarco]

“Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand?”

James Joyce, Ulysses

[savannahvdimarco]

I had it in my head to write an ode to happiness. Yet each time I set out to write it I couldn't quite get it down. 'The Day After Boxing Day' was meant to memorialize a day spent in Conwy, St Andrews, or the south of England, some of my favorite places in the word; places where I was, as Willa Cather wrote, 'entirely happy.' Perhaps it is the American in me that has chased and pined after whole and entire happiness and so feared losing it. Yet what figure in all of history's annals- in Tacitus or Herodotus (or any modern history schoolbook) ever chased after happiness? Whether for good or for evil, those whose lives substantially impacted this earth did not seek after happiness. No- those who shaped cities and laws and cultural customs were driven and fueled by far deeper dreams, motives, and desires. Today I am reminded that the dream to love Jesus and love people with all we have- to seek justice and to work alongside others to bring lasting change- is incongruent with a life spent chasing happiness...for there is no adventure at all in a merely happy life. I believe that at our core, many of us will find a deep-set longing for greater risks, greater waiting, and greater hope in the life led by Love Himself. #TheAdventureIsWorthIt

[savannahvdimarco]

The Day After Boxing Day

Violet-speckled juniper A child of the wind

The osprey, the wren, The poplar, the pine

Soar, stand tall Whisper, and sing

"There! You can see him! Here! There! Lookey here."

Binoculars pass between hands Spiritus —  frost —  time immemorial

The young ships are moored, and the practiced guard assumes his post

Only let us spot the Kingfisher "Sign of sure luck" for the year to come

The sky could not burn any brighter —   Noon comes soft and slow

[savannahvdimarco]

‘Far in the distance past layers upon layers of frost-white clouds, Nanette could barely make out what seemed to be a ragged ruby orifflame caught in wintry crosswinds. It waved and flapped and collapsed, distraught, only to rise and flutter again and again- to and fro, for what seemed to Nanette to be a very long time. Yet in a matter of only moments the clouds began to disperse, and rapidly! Nanette watched with astonishment as pinnacles, turrets, corbels, ramparts, barbicans, battlements and parapets appeared in brightest gold, as if made from the selfsame stuff as the rising sun.’ (A wee excerpt; story in-progress.)

[savannahvdimarco]

Allegro

Craning his neck And squinting his eyes He pivoted westward, searching with longing For raspberry-dotted skies

'Once we get there,' He wrote with assurance, 'Then we will surely, at last Find the dawn,'

Knowing only twilight-wrought steel On a bus bound for Broadway Over star-swept, swirling waters Summited day-by-day without end.

Yet when allegro rose and fell It rose and fell like breath in Lungs and ether, like sapphire Zephyr- exquisite!

For this Brightness endures, even still 'Cross miles and miles Of rhododendron hues 'And there was evening, and there was morning— the first day.'

[savannahvdimarco]

When you were young you loved the summer

And its singular bicycle rides

And seeing everything for the very first time;

Indefatigable 

Now you are old

And each day older still

And thank God

That the summer has passed

For you’ve longed for

The forgiveness of fall

And to button your topcoat

And fasten your cap

Stay for hours at a cafe, my friend

For you know that you can

A season for everything

Dreaming, translation, cartography

Yet this age

Just may bring

Opportunity

For greater good

[savannahvdimarco]

The Symphony of New Creation

We take hope, for the day is near- You'll flood this earth anew Not with torrents of fear But with life in You

Ancient evils drift far far away As slow waters rise And recede, not to stay

Woodwinds, brass, and strings Crescendo, staccato, and soar In silence, we'll rise and sing For Heaven has come; sadness, no more

[savannahvdimarco]

Violence, Real Sorrow, and Projects of Hope

‘Praying for a compassionate heart Which prays and gives, and surges for justice, And pulses for freedom, And beats against the force of evil, A prayer yet to be fulfilled but I see it growing.’ – Meghan Wilson, JustLove ‘Dressember’

Last week the world watched raw camera footage of a 37-year-old black man pinned to the ground and hit at close range in Baton Rouge, LA, USA. We saw it first-hand: four successive bullets driven into his chest as he fell in his own blood. Alton Sterling—a person of infinite value and who was not a proven threat —murdered.

The very next day we watched as Philando Castile, while reaching for his license to hand to an officer, was fatally shot. At 7:04 pm he had been in traffic his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter, yet two minutes later, Diamond Reynolds wept and cried out to God for her boyfriend’s life.  

Her prayer is included in the video posted to Facebook Live:

‘Please don’t tell me my boyfriend’s gone! He don’t deserve this! Please. He’s a good man. He works for St John Public Schools. He doesn’t have no record or anything! He’s never been to jail…anything…Dear God…right now…We ask that you protect us from all this hate…I ask that you cover him, Lord. That you allow him to still be here with us, Lord. His family needs him. I need him. He needs us Lord. Please Lord wrap your arms around him. Please Lord make sure that he is okay…Please, Lord, please, for these police officers. They are not right. Lord they are not allowed to just kill people like this Lord…Please Lord, you know I’m right, Lord. You know we are innocent people, Lord. We are innocent people.’

I recently saw an article outlining ‘all the things no one wants you to know about Alton Sterling.’ The article asserted that Sterling had been a paedophile, a gang member, and that he possessed an illegal firearm. In this, I must offer two points: first, that he was not ever tried, found guilty, and subsequently sentenced to death for any of these claims; and second, that his murder is symptomatic of a gargantuan problem called race-based violence.

This article breaks my heart. We receive the report: ‘Human. Murdered.,’ and instead of sitting back, allowing it to sink in, pale-faced; the story is given a perfunctory glance followed by an automatic response.

Friends…family…Church! People who know and love King Jesus, please hear this: a murder report should not ever elicit opportunity to cleverly legitimise a life’s destruction; nor should it cause us to view all police officers with distrust and contempt.

A report like this one is an urgent call for us—Christ’s body—to work unilaterally across regional and national borders to create places that are safe for all.

Particularly if you have taken the time to read this post, it is likely that you care very much about people and that you hope that things will one day change. Perhaps you have longed for a safer and more just world for decades, and you once advocated for global and domestic safety, justice, hunger, clean water, education, and/or medicine.

Yet, as time passed, violence, abuse, and disease seemed only to multiply astronomically day-by-day. At some point, you stopped watching or discussing the news altogether.

In this case, you did not dissociate from the media’s ‘endless mill of speech’ due to callousness and disinterest. You became cautious and removed because every time you opened the newspaper, you felt more and more powerless to enact any real change.

One of my friends’ parents recently admitted: ‘I think I feel that way.’ I’ve felt it, too.

Yet dissociation yields ever-increasing greater detachment. Very soon we find ourselves reserving issues only to particular neighbourhoods or cities or countries—e.g. as ‘NE Portland’s,’ ‘Baton Rouge’s,’ or ‘Nepal’s’ burdens, and theirs alone. This is done to ensure that we are not (and will not ever be) concerned with them.

This stringent delineation-making is further compounded by the dark side of nationalism, which in itself is not pernicious, yet which can become monstrous when chosen at the cost of all else—and all for fear.

For others, similar feelings emerge when considering violence: detachment, powerlessness, and a-pathos, which literally means ‘lack of feeling.’ Lack of compassion. Lack of sadness. Lack of mourning. Lack of holy, heaven-filled anger at abuse and oppression. In so many ways, Christ’s body—our Church—has gone numb.

We are like the twelve disciples, for upon seeing desolation and hunger, we look to Jesus and inform Him that we have only two hundred denarii…only two loaves and two fish.

We feel disqualified, disconnected, and without resource—yet this is not who we are!

In truth, we are treasured children of the Living God.

You and I were made for the Gospel. The Gospel is not solely a Romans-road paper-tract on personal forgiveness, but a cosmic story of Heaven coming down home-by-home and town-by-town. As we step into this story, the world begins to see what International Justice Mission’s CEO Gary Haugen calls ‘bold projects of hope: projects of transformation that bring real change, that teach us, and that inspire hope—because the vulnerable poor need all three.’

N.T. Wright, University of St Andrews lecturer and theologian, shares a similar view:

‘What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbour as yourself—will last into God’s future…They are part of what we may call building for God’s Kingdom.’ NT Wright, Surprised by Heaven

How then, do we transcend the detachment that says, ‘that’s not my struggle, that’s not my battle,’ and the near-inevitable cynicism and blasé apathy that are rooted in fear and paralysation? We pray each day for great compassion, since we were made for more.

Hear the Cry defines compassion as with-ness, because ‘Jesus was called Emmanuel (God with us) and came to live among us, into our brokenness.’ Justice and compassion mark the sound of Heaven’s roar.

“The Lord roars from Zion... [For] they sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.’ (Amos 1:2 & 2:6-7)

I am convinced that prayer is the only vehicle by which we can secure the vast compassion and courage required to respond to God’s heart for justice on earth. Through prayer, God increases our ability to see how much power we carry as followers of Jesus. We begin to see Scripture’s promises unfolding in real-time, for our prayers are ‘powerful and effective.’ (James 5:16)  

Above all, He explodes our limitations for love. As Francis Cabrini once pleaded with God, ‘Give me a heart as big as the universe,’ so must we. We were created to love and to know love…ad infinitum, no matter what the cost.

Of course this is, as CS Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory, ‘a real, costly love.’ Yet is this not what we were promised?

We were not promised a spacious two-story home, annual tropical holidays, and a 401K. While these things can be fantastic and are certainly not wrong, they are not our inheritance as followers of Jesus. Indeed, we were promised persecution. Out of great love, Jesus instructed a wealthy young man to sell his lavish belongings (and all he had) to follow Him. Jesus explained to His followers that ‘any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.’ (Luke 14:33) We are promised that the Gospel will cost each one of us everything.

‘For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’ (Matthew 16:25) William Wilberforce, who fought in prayer and in parliament for the transatlantic slave trade’s end for 18 years, understood the gravity of these promises; as did Martin Luther King Jr., and Willie Kimani.

On the night before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowd before him, ‘Like anyone I would like to live a long life…longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just wanna do God’s will.’ This month, Willie Kimani, a Kenyan International Justice Mission attorney, was murdered for providing legal advice to Kenyans who were oppressed by corrupt law enforcement. He died in heroism. All three are among many men and women who understood Jesus’ promises and found extraordinary freedom in giving their lives fully to Him in real, costly love.

We were made to create, not destroy. We were born to be heroic in championing God’s mighty love— as the author of Philippians puts it, to ‘shine like stars in the universe.’ (Philippians 2:15)

As we begin to pray, God will burden our hearts for racial violence and injustice. He will break our spirits for refugees’ stories and for the global ‘subterranean world of violence’ against the poor described in G. Haugen’s The Locust Effect. He will fill us with compassion for the hungry and hurting in our neighbourhoods and communities. He will bridge chasms between nations, races, and ethnic groups. He will flood you with ideas for projects and your lives with resources to enact real change. He will overtake your heart with passion and hope.

Obadiah Coffee, The Hummingbird Project (Calais and Dunkirk), Apse Adorn, and Blessed to Give are all examples of start-up projects launched by people who were inspired to sustainably invest in impoverished and/or refugee communities in Bulgaria, France, England, as well as in a range of global locations in which anti-trafficking and justice-focused NGOs operate. Many brilliant ethical businesses, racial reconciliation groups, orphanages, rehabilitation centres, safe homes, literacy centres, homeless shelters, and justice literature collectives already exist, yet our world needs so many more.  

As the enemy of justice is apathy, the enemy of destruction is creation. In Jesus, we become passionate, deep-feeling, innovative thinkers and justice-bringers. Change is possible, truly. Reader, I promise you this: our Creator God has a unique plan for your life. You are precious to Him, and He has given you connections, talents, specified knowledge and imaginative capacities to affect change for so many other people whom He desperately loves. We have only to pray and to walk in faith.

In prayer and compassion, we become present with those who suffer worldwide, because Jesus Himself is present. He is not the Deist’s God, who sets things in motion and steps away. He is present. He is here. His heart is now yours, and His perfect love changes everything.

This article is a call to prayer. Racism, brutality, and oppression abound. Our world is exceedingly violent, and our hope is in Jesus alone. Oh Church, we must pray.

‘Every great movement of God starts with a kneeling figure.’ D.L. Moody

Much love,

Savannah 

[savannahvdimarco]

Through Portals and Stained Glass: To Hope Is to Glimpse the Land of the Living

‘Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be.”

― Ophelia to King Claudius, Hamlet, W. Shakespeare

There is a cobblestone esplanade beside the Vltava river that runs uninterrupted from Palackého náměstí (Praha 2) to Pražský most (Praha 1). The distance between the square and the Charles Bridge is less than 2 kilometers, yet on a walk between them one cannot miss the shining Prague castle on the west side nor Prague’s National Theatre on the other.  

Each year thousands of Czech locals, tourists, and expats visit the National Theatre to see a highly-acclaimed ballet or drama, or to hear an opera by a composer such as Giuseppe Verdi or Antonín Dvořák. The street-lit ivory coloured theatre is punctuated by arches, supported by columns, and graced with triglyphs, Ionic balustrades, and larger-than-life acroterion. A rider carrying a laurel wreath holds the reins firmly in her right hand whilst her horse quadriga rears on its hind legs as if set to leap from the rooftop’s edge. Symbols of the arts, the nine Grecian muses, wrapped in cut-marble robes, crown the outer parapets.

Similar classically-styled parliament houses and state buildings can be found in Rome, Vienna, London, Paris, Budapest, Berlin, and many other European cities. The gilded edifices are exquisitely designed, and consequently many have become worthwhile tourist attractions.

Such places receive well-deserved reverence and laudation, yet TS Eliot once wrote of the ‘inexplicable splendor of Ionian gold’ and called London an ‘Unreal City.’ In his 1922 work (The Wasteland) Eliot writes on fragmentation and pain birthed through wartime trauma and the burgeoning modern era. Eliot recalls the modern world’s achievements with dejection. The verses read less like a paean or ode to an era and more like a prolonged vacant stare: ‘On Margate Sands./ I can connect/ nothing with nothing.’

Amongst early 20th-century writers and artists, this opinion was not unique. At the time, many creative people signed manifestos against classicism and traditional aesthetic notions. In 1909 the signers of the Manifesto of Italian Futurism proclaimed: 

‘We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes... is more beautiful that the Victory of Samothrace.’

Furthermore, in 1918 the Dadaists took up a similar mantle, writing: 

‘And so Dada was born of a need for independence, of a distrust toward unity… we recognize no theory… Is the aim of art to make money and cajole the nice nice bourgeois? Rhymes ring with the assonance of the currencies and the inflexion slips along the line of the belly in profile... Here we are dropping our anchor in fertile ground.’

Max Ernst, Tristan Tzara, FT Marinetti, Salvador Dali, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce are among the ‘avant-garde’ who led the charge against the cultural status quo and advocated for an alternative view of the modern world. 

These artists were disillusioned. What once was lively and beautiful now seemed dead, for the world itself was corrupt, surreal, and even unreal.

As I pass by the Prague Castle late at night, I feel it, too. What might have been so impressive to me in the past now feels lackluster. It all seems surreal. I find myself thinking, ‘Who are we kidding? What is this all for? These classically styled monuments declare prosperity and peace, yet exploitation occurs in these cities day after day. This is not at all unique to Prague. Child trafficking, prostitution, slavery, poverty, and oppression…it’s all here…in Prague, London, Vienna…everywhere. In wanderlust- fernweh- we collect experience after experience and photograph after photograph at monument after monument. We are insatiable in our collection and consumption at home and abroad, yet all the while, our cities are broken. The European capitals buzz with riches and brand names and luxury living…but what is it all for?’

I find myself agreeing with Eliot. Indeed, these cities are unreal. Here, the Christian and absurdist worldviews collide. Yet the two perspectives diverge at least on one essential point: hope. Could it be that the human awareness of corruption and sense of absurdity are intended to lead us not into dejection, but into the Land of the Living?

Dorset singer-songwriter Roo Panes has written a song about this Land. The final stanza is as follows:

I know a land called the land of the living

It's the world beyond those curtains where we learned to play

Oh we'll go back, we'll go back to the beginning

And we’ll pick up on the trails of forgotten ways

Whether beyond the curtains, through the looking glass, past wardrobe’s furs, or down the rabbit hole, children’s books are filled with portals to whimsical and wondrous lands. This Land is very much the same as the ones described in children’s stories, yet it is even more wonderful than any one of us could ever imagine. In the Land of the Living, the wind beckons us to adventure, to skip, to romp, to leap, to dance, and to frolick. While our own world can be cold and unforgiving, the heart of this Land is warm and overflowing with love. The King of this Land tells us not to worry and not be afraid. This is the Land that we were created to find.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. – Jesus (John 14:27)

One might catch sight of this world through music, poetry, imagination, prayer, or in peering through a stained-glass window. Yet the most astonishing thing of all is this: Scripture promises that one day our cities will actually and truly be brought to life through Jesus' mighty, primordial love. The King declares, ‘I am making all things new!....write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ (Revelation 21:5) He promises that all fragments will come together, ‘And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.’ (Colossians 1:17) He also promises that all forms of exploitation and oppression will cease. This day is coming...really! One day a new epoch will rise as ‘rosy-fingered dawn.’ In anticipating this Reality, one can begin to hold sorrow and fragmentation hand-in-hand with enduring hope.

Of course this all sounds fanciful and strange; more like a fairytale and less like a real solution to global problems such as poverty and malnourishment or cosmic issues like evil and sin. Every day, though, I become aware (once again) of my own real selfishness. I find myself crying out to God, ‘Make me new! Make my heart new! I want to love like You! Please make me new!’ As it is only by and through God’s love that our hearts will morph, shift, and change to become selfless, pure, gracious, and kind, so it is also only by His Spirit that this world will be changed. Resurrection and metamorphosis are unbelievable, yet they are mainstays of the Biblical narrative from Genesis to Revelation. ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed’ (1 Corinthians 15:51). God promises that He will transform all things. He gives His word that all who trust in Him will be with Him in the Land of the Living for eternity. It seems to me that eternity is not a garment spun of ongoing time measured in centuries, nanoseconds, or lightyears but of boundless and unmeasurable grace. The world must be clothed in this garment in order to last, for its current fabric is fraying at its buttonholes and seams. The fabric of eternity is God’s unbreakable love.

While we wait to enter this Land—as Ancient as it is New—we can rest in this steady, perfect love. We can marvel at palace gardens and ivy-covered mansions while seeking justice—in this way, devoting higher thought and attention to human life and dignity as much (if not far more) than an edifice or artefact. We do not need to (and in fact, should not) entertain the belief that all things are already glorious. In moments of absurdity, as if glimpsing sunlight through a stained glass window, we may remember that Jesus died so that we could know His heart. As Leonard Knight once said, ‘this is a love story that is staggering to everybody in the whole world. That God really loves us… a lot!’

This is why I am neither an absurdist nor a nihilist, only because I believe that Leonard was right. God really loves us…every single one of us…a lot.

‘There’s a thin place between here and heaven

There’s a Kingdom closing in’

– M. Ketterer

xx

Savannah

[savannahvdimarco]

Many worlds have I traversed and have I seen, of

Diamond-studded seas, blood-bought gilded ruins, and criss-crossed cables connecting fluorescence to grey

Oh how can it be that Reality is the most beautiful of them all

Honey-sweet melodies and soft white petals drift and sway as snow from above

The great assembly fills the courtyard in eager stillness, for on this day

All at once they will see and they will feel and they will hear the call

This land is founded on justice and wisdom; established in joy and its laws writ in love,

In matched hope-beyond-hope, the assembly awaits the sound that rises beyond ramparts and starscapes and soundwaves to say,

‘You are my everything, you are my all.’

[savannahvdimarco]

Nous sommes une famille : Grace, Hope, and Enfance

This week I watched a beautiful film called Joyeux Noël. The film is based on a true story about a well-known Western Front ceasefire on Christmas Eve 1914.

In the film, on that evening, German, French, English, and Scottish soldiers emerged from their trenches to the sound of bagpipes, carolling, and mingled languages. According to letters and journalistic reports, on Christmas Day, Germans exchanged cigars with Brits, Brits challenged Germans to football, and soldiers ventured to ‘No-Mans Land’ to trade chocolate and gifts. Men from enemy nations shook hands and cracked jokes. Candles lining the German trench reflected in the frost and carols stretched across the vast expanse from one trench to another. Fröhliche Weihnachten. Merry Christmas. Joyeux Noël.

One English veteran recalls the event:

‘It was rather foggy actually at first that morning but when the fog cleared we began to climb out of the trench and wave and then quickly jump in again in case they shot at us. But nobody did shoot and eventually several people got out and some of us went forward beyond our barbed wire. Anyway eventually a couple of chaps met in no man’s land and shook hands and turned round and waved and we all cheered and then we flocked out like a football crowd. Sort of running as fast as we could – it was very broken ground and people fell into shell holes and things - but still we all got into the middle eventually and we began to all shake hands and then we began to swap things like cigarettes and cigars and chocolate and cognac and we gave them a bit of rum and so on and everything got very friendly and happy and we stayed out there the whole of the day. I have a letter here I wrote on Boxing Day 1914: ‘It was a beautiful day – the ground was white with frost. Some of them were trying to arrange a football match but it didn’t come off. Talk about peace and goodwill – I never saw a friendlier sight. We tried to explain to each other that we bore no malice.’ 

Such was 25 December 1914: A singular day marked by laughter and human kindness amidst the horrendous inhumanity of war.

Today is 18 November 2015: Five days after the attacks on Baghdad and Paris. Six days since the bombings in Beirut. One week since an anonymous Yik Yak user threatened to ‘shoot every black person’ at University of Missouri. On this very day, millions of people made in the Imago Dei have gone without clean water, homes, or nutritious food. Approximately 27 million people are trapped in bonded labour, unpaid manual work, or held as sex slaves. Violent conflicts persist in South Sudan due to cattle raids and millions have been driven from war-ravaged regions such as Syria, Afghanistan, or Somalia to undertake the fatal passage to Europe. This list is not comprehensive. Horror. Fear. Loathing. Poverty. Exploitation. Pain. Pain. Pain.

I know that the whole world is reeling.

I know that ISIS soldiers have caused more grief than I could ever imagine.

I know that I have not experienced a bombing or shooting firsthand.

I know that the First World War is entirely different from today’s multifaceted global crises.

I know that I do not study IR.

I know that I am not a military member nor veteran.

I know that I am neither a politician nor theologian.

I know that this is neither the time nor place to offer solutions or admonition.

But I do think that here—in the 1914 Christmas truce—there is something of Heaven.

What occurred in No Man’s Land on this special day? What inspired men whose undivided attentions had been fixed on destroying their foreign enemies to cast off their arms and to embrace their enemies as friends?

I believe it was the love of God.

How then may we be certain that we are at a loss against ISIS’ aims? Against systems that oppress the underprivileged and propagate cycles of poverty? Against ethnocentrism, racism, and racial violence? Against hate?

If our hearts become callous and we do not love.

Through God’s love, we find strength to pour out grace upon grace toward those in need and mercy for those who have committed atrocities.

Through God’s love, we can commit all our talents and energies to devise new strategies not only to meet basic needs but also to affirm the beauty, dignity, and honour of those who have been confronted with great hardship and deep sorrow.  

Through God’s love, we can begin the difficult work of researching global issues and becoming true allies to those who have been denied justice: a fundamental human right.

Through God’s love, we can respond to those who enact great evil with the same heartbeat as Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ten Boom was imprisoned (and later sent to a concentration camp) for guiding Jews to safety during the Holocaust. Bonhoeffer fervently opposed the Nazi regime during his lifetime. He was executed in 1945, only a few weeks before the Allies liberated his camp. Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, Bonhoeffer wrote the following:

'Bless them that persecute you.' If our enemy cannot put up with us any longer and takes to cursing us, our immediate reaction must be to lift up our hands and bless him. Our enemies are the blessed of the Lord. Their curse can do us no harm. May their poverty be enriched by all the riches of God, with the blessing of He whom they seek to oppose in vain. We are ready to endure their curses so long as they redound to their blessing.'

In reflecting on her imprisonment at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Boom recalled her own struggle:

‘Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him...Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness...And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself.’

It seems to me that the pendulum has swung once more. On one hand, we have entered a new era, yet on the other hand, we have only revisited an older one. Our generation may now be faced with the very same questions as our predecessors Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. How do we respond to pain beyond measure? What is our reply to incomprehensible evil?

I pray that we become a generation marked by great and mighty love.

I pray that we might grow in selflessness, sacrifice, courage, and nobility.

I pray that we might mourn for those who mourn and that we might mature in solemnity while always worshipping with songs of joy.

I pray that we might cease to categorise problems (e.g. ‘Middle Eastern issues’ or ‘American South issues’) and that we may begin to share one another’s burdens.

I pray that we might come to know—profoundly and unshakeably—that, as a good friend of mine once wrote, ‘we belong to one another.’

I pray that we might have mercy toward those who commit great evil and that we might remember that Jesus leaves the ninety-nine to find the one.

I pray that we would take hope in all things.

I pray that we would dedicate our days to seeing lives, communities, and nations transformed.

I pray that one by one we might reclaim our childhood (enfance) and create space and programmes for others to do so: to flourish, laugh, and dream again.

That we would learn what it means to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly through adversity and before Love Himself. There’s a Kingdom breaking through.

‘To love another person is to see the face of God.’ – V. Hugo

Much love, all.

- Savannah