I met a celebrity once

A response to Addie Zierman's new book, Night Driving

What great news. Addie Zierman, that great blogger and author of a compelling memoir about the shallowness of evangelical certainty was coming out of distant Minnesota to our odd corner of North Carolina, and we could go see her. But as the day drew closer, I began to fear. She’d come, read from her book, and go away again, and I’d never have a chance to say how I’d connected with her words. Or if I did have a minute, would it come out clear, or all tangled up. So often I have this image of something to say that looks so clear and compelling, but putting it into words comes out such a mess. Or perhaps worst of all, I’d manage to be adequately coherent, she’d listen and politely smile, say that was all so very interesting and then disappear, not getting a word of it.

After all, who was I to attempt to talk to her? She’s a celebrity. A blogger that people actually read, a writer with a real published book that is sold in bookstores. Who was I? A blogger no one read, a self-published writer whose book hadn’t sold. But surely, my heart whispered, she ought to know how much it would mean to me if she listened and accepted my thoughts. She’d validate my existence, let me know I counted for something, was on the right track. But if she didn’t, if she snubbed me, could I handle the disappointment?

When she posted on her blog that she was cancelling her Charleston appearance because she just couldn’t fit it in, I wondered if she would soon cancel the Charlotte stop too. Maybe it would be just as well. Less risky. But the blog post affirmed she was keeping the Charlotte date. So maybe it was up to me to decide to stay away, keep hidden. But I decided to go ahead.

Addie in person was pretty cool. She recognized me, just because I’d commented on her blog and Facebook. She read from her book, then summarize what happened between that excerpt and the next one she’d read, and her extemporaneous summaries were as articulate as her written text. In the QA my wife got to tell her story of reading Addie’s book just at the right time to encourage someone else. And I learned another intriguing detail. Not only had she come to Charlotte, but she was actually staying just a few miles from our house miles south of Charlotte. The kind of odd coincidence that any evangelical knows has to be a God thing. (Aside: Why do we do this? God makes and arranges so many unique circumstances, but we only celebrate the oddly coincidental ones. Aren’t the other ones any less his handiwork?).

So that was the darkness I wandered in, feeling I needed Addie’s attention to be whole, to be noteworthy. Oh a celebrity, so grand, so far above me. How wonderful if she should look down from the heights of fame and notice me — then my life would be worth something. But faith reminds me my life is truly worth something; God looks down from the heights of heaven, and not only sees me, but longs for and invites me to relationship.

The new book, Night Driving is her story of this road trip. I can't wait to get to the part where she gets to Charlotte and meets me :)

My other posts about Addie Zierman
Addie Zierman and the Second World War
Addie Zierman
The Happy Middle

Addie Zierman and the Second World War

Sometimes you read a book and it shines a light on something completely different. Addie Zierman’s memoir When We Were on Fire did that for me. She writes of growing up evangelical in the 90’s, of the certainty of that subculture that if you did and said all the right things all would be well and effortless. I became an evangelical in the 70’s and I recognized her world. She had different popular bands, and different slogans, but the certitude that you could Get It Right was the same. Now don’t misunderstand, evangelicalism does get much right — the call to a relationship with Jesus Christ and to plunge deep into Scripture are two very right things. But the belief We Can Get it Right and Must Get it Right has dangers.

I’ve had a lifelong fascination with World War II. As a child, I knew the Hollywood version, where the heroes almost never died, even when things looked their darkest. I read history some to know that wasn’t totally realistic, but still the war ended in a resounding victory less than four years after Pearl Harbor. One of my favorite books growing up was called Great American Fighter Pilots of World War II, and my favorite chapter was about the Marianas Turkey Shoot. In the war against Japan, American fighter pilots started with big disadvantages, since the Japanese Zero was a better plane. But about a year before the end of the war, the Americans had a new fighter plane, the F6F, that outshone the Zero. The result, the Americans had a battle that seemed easy, like target practice (hence the name “Turkey shoot”). I loved this story — things only stay hard for a short time, then they become easy.

Another childhood memory: sitting in my living room, the radio is playing To Dream the Impossible Dream. I listen to the words and think that is how life ought to be. To dream the impossible dream, to fight the impossible fight, to dare with my last ounce of courage. Can these two memories be reconciled? Is life an impossible dream, requiring courage and self sacrifice, or is it a crisis that can soon be resolved? I think I attempted a reconciliation; to believe when the crisis came you should dare everything, hold nothing back, break through the opposition and things would sooner or later become easy.

The evangelical faith I found in college adopted this notion of dare everything and break through to victory. Is it not what Jesus did? He suffered and died, and on the third day he rose again. Then the Spirit came upon the church at Pentecost, and the church began to spread. But unfortunately the church grew complacent and overly traditional, and compromised. We needed to rediscover the fire, get serious again and turn the world upside down.

Addie was taught the same image. Do the right things, it may be hard at first but you’ll soon be victorious. She wasn’t prepared for doing the right things, and finding life was still hard. Neither was I. When I’d been an evangelical over twenty years, a realization hit like a shock one day. I’d been a Christian over three times as long as World War II had ever lasted, (even for the British who fought for six years), and I still hadn’t gotten to the easy phase. I wondered what I might have gotten wrong, came close to giving up on the faith, but got to a new understanding. I’d been emotionally misunderstanding the promises of God for years, interpreting them as recipes to get to the easy phase. They are not keys to an easy life. They are assertions to cling to when life is hard, to remember God is with you.

At the same time I first read Addie’s book, I saw a comment Winston Churchill made to a friend during the war. Americans, he said, are prone to thinking once you have made the key decision, all will go well. Evangelical theology has the same tendency to oversimplification. If you’ve done the key thing, given your heart to Jesus (and that is key, I’m not suggesting it isn’t), all should be well. But I’ve come to realize that perhaps the standard narrative of Scripture is not the hero who finds faith in God so all becomes easy, but the hero who finds faith in God, and clings to that faith and God’s promises when circumstances remain bleak.

I’ve just recently read again the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal. My old style of thinking returned: what great faith, what a great victory. If only we had the same faith. But I look again, and realize the story isn’t quite like that. Yes, Elijah had faith and saw a great victory. But it wasn’t the kind of victory that made everything easy from then on. Jezebel was still out to get him, king Ahab was still lukewarm in faith (at best). A real ultimate victory would have been to unite Israel and Judah together once again, make the two one kingdom, worshiping together at the temple in Jerusalem. That didn’t happen. This story too, like the stories of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the unnamed heroes of faith in the last verses of Hebrews 11, is about someone who had faith, who say the hand of God sustain his faith, but did not yet see the resolution of all problems.

Yesterday I started Night Driving, Addie’s second book. I felt a twinge of disturbance at the beginning. She’s still struggling with those same issues of life being messy that she described in When We Were on Fire? Why? Then it dawned on me. My disturbance was the old longing for instant and dramatic victory, only slightly readjusted. You learn that life is hard, that God is with you in the hard times but doesn’t always instantly remove the hard parts; that does not bring on its own instantaneous victory where you adjust your expectations once and then proceed serenely with perfect patience through the ongoing messes of life. 

Am I a dreamer?

Two memories combine as I contemplate the modern political scene.

One, a memorable speech from a meeting a few years back. Our work group director publicly thanked an assistant director for being a voice of clarity in their deliberations. He said she had a remarkable gift for gently yet firmly pointing out where his ideas were incomplete and destined to fail unless substantially reworked. An awesome speech, inspiring to hear of the wisdom of the associate. But the speech also showed the humility of our director, who would publicly praise his assistant for showing him where he was wrong, rather than sideline her as an annoying obstacle to his plans.

Second memory, C. S. Lewis writing about his wife in A Grief Observed, stating one thing he misses greatly about her was her ability to penetrate the nonsense in his thinking. “Her mind was lithe and quick and muscular as a leopard. Passion, tenderness and pain were all equally unable to disarm it. It scented the first whiff of cant or slush then sprang, and knocked you over before you knew what was happening. How many bubbles of mine she pricked!”

What makes politicians popular today? Saying what you think, not letting “those people” intimidate you.

Is not sticking to one’s convictions a good thing? Yes. Stick to your convictions of value, but be flexible and teachable about how to implement those values. What should we value in politics? My list would include the rule of law, civility in discourse, equal opportunity and responsibility for all. But I also value being alert to complexity, ready to learn and to modify one’s default reactions in new circumstances are also virtues. I’m sure when we meet God face to face we will have much to learn. “I had no idea” we’ll probably find ourselves saying often. What did Job say when he saw God?

Where are the politicians who explain what they’ve learned from their opponents?

No one is like that. I must be dreaming, I know. But is not dreaming of the better something to be encouraged? 

Wonder recovered

I go for a walk looking for fall colors. The brilliant reds of really classic fall photos are absent here, we have yellows and browns. One small tree at least attains reddish brown, I stop to look. 

Then my attitude shifts. My longing for bright red fall colors is partly an illusion. If only I could see such a scene and walk around in it, then I’d be content. But yet God has as thoroughly and wondrously made these yellows and browns. They are not any less his handiwork for being more common. These too are precious creations from his hand.

I pause at a newly mowed lawn, where I can see the tracks of the mower back and forth, merging together at the edges. Another shift. I’ve always valued the wild, the complex non-linear patterns of nature. But what is this I see really? Not complex and awesome? A mind, a soul, an image of God, has chosen to impose flatness on this patch of grass, like God in creation — ordering, dividing, setting limits. And it is an intricate dance, the person who wants a flat lawn acquiring a machine; engineers, craftsmen, retail workers all played their part to make it real and available. 

Longing for significance

I long to be the center of attention, the one in whom all things hold together.
But that longing is doomed to fail, the world is far bigger than I.
It is God at the center, who hold all things together.

I am at the center of his gaze, his attention is on me, more focused than I can imagine. His attention is also on everyone else, and I cannot fathom how he can focus on so many at once. But he does. And his focus, although divided, is still greater on me even than the attention I pay to myself. He has counted the hairs on my head.

Yesterday I thought of the two bricklayers, when asked what they are doing.
“Laying bricks,” one says, “I have five hours left on this shift.”
“Building a cathedral,” the other one says. “Won't it be beautiful!”

Maybe there's more to the story. The first bricklayer won't last long, the work is too hard and the coworkers too annoying. The second one keeps going, he has a vision for his job. But then comes the day when they will plaster and paint the walls. "What? Why?" the bricklayer cries out. “You're hiding my bricks! How can I show my children and grandchildren what I built here?”

“Don't fret,” the architect says. “The crowds may not notice your bricks underneath the plaster and paint, but I will. You did well -- you laid a good wall.”

God grant us the grace to trust that his attention, his commendation of our work is enough. We all long for notoriety and attention from others, but let us commit those desires to God.

I believe and I don't believe

I was startled this morning reading a familiar passage, Mark 9:14-29. Jesus, Peter, James and John have just come down from the mountain after the Transfiguration, to find an argument and a confused crowd. A man with a demon-possessed son says he brought the boy but the disciples were not able to drive out the spirit. Jesus asks to see the boy, and the spirit threw the boy into a convulsion.

“How long has he been like this?”
“Since childhood,” the father answers. “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”
“‘If you can’?” said Jesus, “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

The father's words are impressive for their honesty. “I do believe, but I also don't. Please help.” I wonder how often are we that honest in our prayers?

Empowerment, a holy buzzword

I enjoy satirizing corporate buzzwords. My favorite punchline for "Why did the chicken cross the road?" The business consultant: "We developed with our client a comprehensive plan to leverage her core competencies and better position herself for success in today's changing marketplace environment."

But "empowerment" is one corporate buzzword that represents something holy, something God has been doing for a long time. God does empower his people. In fact, without God's empowerment, there is not much to say for us. God enjoys taking ordinary, insignificant people and making something great of them. 

But alas, we all too often find this too hard to believe. At first we struggle to believe God could do something with us. Then we shift to struggling to believe God can do something with that other person. Or we cling to the role God has given us, forgetting that it is his gift, and that he likely delights in giving the same kind of gift to others. If we feel driven to control everything around us, because no one can get the details right as well as we can, have we not lost sight that our position and competencies are gifts from God?

I think God calls us to be stewards of the authority or positions he gives us. He gives them to us for a time, not to be kept permanently for ourselves, but to be used for his kingdom. The time will come when we won't have that role any more, we are to hand it back to God, or see God hand it to someone else.

The gift of being a beloved child in his kingdom, that is eternal. That we can cling to and call our own. The gifts of being someone notable in this world can only be temporary. We are only temporary in this world.