The Magnificot

And Mary said, "My soul glorifies the Lord

and my spirit rejoices in my Savior God, for he has been mindful of his humble servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Might One has done great things

for me- holy is His name."

Luke 1.46-49

I love the Magnificot. Which is the fancy name for the song of Mary found in the Lukan Christmas story. I find it to be a beautiful and refreshing piece of scripture. Its just happy- and I like happy things.

However, I often think people misunderstand the Maginificot. People often think it is what Mary's response was when told she would be the mother of the Savior of the world. And that is a wrong understanding of what her song is.

The angel came to Mary and dropped the news bomb that would change her life. But Mary's immediate response wasn't to burst into her "My soul glofiries the Lord.." song. First it says her heart was troubled (which is totally understandable reaction for when a heavenly being shows up in your bedroom at night) and then she went into the "What in the heck are you talking about???" mode. The angel explains then the pesky details of the matter and Mary goes... "Umm...ok. Whatever you say." She agrees but to me, her words don't exactly resonate with assurance.

Maybe it is just me, but I like Mary more knowing she wasn't exactly 100% sure of this situation right off the bat. That she went through the scared, confused, and kind of just whatever stages. It was only later, days later, when she travled to visit her cousin that she had found peace and joy in her situation. At first she wasn't singing about this life altering news, she was processing it. And this comforts me. Because if the mother of Jesus (who got news from actual angels) can take time to process what is happening before she finds joy and peace in it, then that make me feel better about how I react when God drops bombs on my life (and I never even get news from angels...).

But Mary also reminds me that eventually I will find peace and joy within situations. That when God works, even if I'm uncertain about what the heck He is doing at the time, that the happiness and singing will come. Its comforting to know that situations that start out as kind of weird and uncertain can become situations in which I end up celebrating and being grateful for.

So I guess above all, the Magnificot gives me hope. Hope that situations that can scare me or make me cry or confuse me can one day make me sing.

Hope that out of disorder and disruption will come order and peace.

Hope that even when I don't totally get what God is doing that it will be for my own good.

Hope that even if I don't understand the means, the end will always make sense and bring joy.

Top Five

Top Five People to See on My Wonderful Christmas Break:

1. Chelsea (and Gavin)- best friend since forever
2. Jade- my other best friend since forever
3. My Dad- I often neglect to put the time and effort into this relationship I should
4. Jenny Simpson- As much as I don't want her back in Nashville for the reasons she was here so much, I do miss our Sunday afternoons
5. Ed Camera and family- just good for the soul

"When one falls in the river,

the one who rescues them

shares in their new life forever."

- Mohawk Proverb

when we walk with people through the hard places

when we sit with them in the midst of their suffering

when we wipe their tears and say "I've been there"

when we offer the hope that night eventually ends

when we show compassion and mercy

when we simply hold their hands and let them grieve

when we aren't afraid to look at their pain in the face and acknowledge it

when we do no more than offer our presence as a reminder that they are not alone

we pull them out of the rivers and back onto dry land

we participate in their lives and change their stories

and in doing this,

we become part of both.

Jesus was born into a family.

I know- not the normal Advent slogan, but that's what I keep coming up with this year.

Jesus Christ, Savior of All, the I AM, was born into a family.

I can't exactly put my finger on what is so profound about that for me, but its resonating within me. I think, perhaps, it may have something to do with my deep need for community.

The fact that Jesus came to be inside of a family unit speaks depths into each of our needs for community. For if Jesus Christ, Son of God, needed a family, then surely each of us do too.

I think the fact that the Savior was not exempt from the beautifully complicated relationships that one has with parents and siblings says something about the deep needs in each of our lives for genuine relationships. Who knows you better than your parents? Your siblings? No one.

They are the people who have seen you at your best and at your worst.

They know you intimately.

And I think we all need that. No one is exempt from the need of community.
There is something within each of us that cries out to others- a deep calling to deep.

Sometimes after one has experienced a broken relationship or a failed community, they try and close this place off. They build walls and defenses around it. But that doesn't stop that place from being there. And eventually that need for others will break through all the barriers and walls and show itself.

So Jesus Christ was born into a family.

So this Christmas season, I'm letting it remind me that we all need somebody.

We all need family.

We all need community.

We all need a place to know, and to be known.

That its not a weakness when I need a shoulder to lean on or a friend to hold onto to.

That there is no shame in simply needing time and space to commune with my family.

That the most natural thing in the world is our need to have genuine relationships with others.

The need for community is a trademark of humanity.

The yearning for family and relationships is a basic instinct.

We all have moments where we need to be reminded that we are not alone.

Especially at Christmas.

Traffic School?

I had to go to traffic school today (shhhh.....don't tell Mom).
And really it wasn't that bad. Except I was the oldest person in the class.

Anyway, there was this guy in the class who wasn't from Tennessee. He was from Mississippi. And we, being the entire class, started to discuss how he came to be in a Tennessee driving school. Turns out that he is a musician and is consistently playing gigs in Nashville. So, thus the Tennessee ticket and driving school.

Anyway, before we knew it we had convinced him to get his guitar from his car and sing a few songs for us. And he did. And what struck me was that this musician couldn't stop talking about how much he loved music. He just glowed when he talked about his band, his songs, his tours, and was so excited about music that he was thrilled to death to even play in the middle of driving school in some Metro classroom.

And I was jealous of that Mississippi born musician.
Because all I could think about was: Is there anything I am that passionate about?

Is there anything I am so passionate about that I can't shut up about?
Something that its so much a part of me that it simply oozes out of me wherever I am at.?Something that is so consuming in my heart that I'm willing to tell whoever where ever all about it? And be thrilled about such an opportunity?

I think I've misplaced my passion. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go find it.
I'm not going to let some Mississipian have all the fun.

"Trust at the mercy of the response it receives is a bogus trust..."- Brennan Manning

I say I have faith. I say I trust God. I say I believe that He is doing what is best for me despite how the situation looks. I pray. I say "thy will be done...". I am good at having the words. But at the end of the day, the words are nothing if not back up by action.

How many times at the end of the day, somewhere in the deep caverns of my heart, do I wonder if God has forgotten me? How many times do I cry because I feel lost or abandoned? How often do the words "When? Why? Where?" spring from my lips? Why do the words of a popular song "Remember your people, remember your children, remember your promise, O God" resound so loudly within my heart?

I say I have faith. But at the end of the day, I question whether God remembers me. I question whether or not He is being Who He has promised to be. I say I trust Him, but I base that trust upon what evidence I can see.

And as Manning points out, that is not trust at all. If I really trusted God, evidence or no evidence, I would put one foot in front of the other unswervingly knowing never fearing or feeling alone. I guess I too often forget that God really owes me nothing.

Cause in the grand scheme of things, God loves me. And that love should be enough. Just the gift of receiving His love, forgiveness, and grace should be enough for me. I should not need anything else. I should want for nothing more. I should trust because His love is the only response I need.

Sometimes, I just need to be reminded of that. Sometimes I need to be reminded that if my faith is based upon evidence, then its not faith at all. Sometimes I feel as if I know nothing about faith or trust at all.

Thank you, Aristotle

"Hope is a waking dream..."- Aristotle

I had a conversation the other night about teenagers and dreaming. A converstaion about how one of the indredible things about teenagers is their ability to have dreams about how life might turn out. That at their age and innocence they still have hope that whatever they imagine life will be like, might actually come to be.

We had the conversation in the context, that as adults, some of us have lost our ability to have dreams. To have hope. To believe that what we want, what we desire, can actually be. I find this to be very true, and very sad.

Life never really turns out the way you imagine it would at sixteen. Some dreams don't come true. Some things aren't achieved. Some dreams you lose hold of slowly, like sand slipping out your hand so slightly that you never notice the lack of it until its completely gone. Some dreams shift, they change or fade away. Other dreams can get lost or ripped away in a moment. But you still feel each loss. And when we lose dreams, there is a grief. A hurt. Its like a part of ourselves has left.

And since it hurts, I think that we stop dreaming. Because life is hard enough, has enough stress and worry without inflicting this hurt upon ourselves. But I think that when we do this, we in effect, lose our ability to hope as well.

I love Aristotle's quote, "Hope is a waking dream." Because, in essence, what are dreams but hope of what we want life to turn out to be. And hope is the conscious factor of these dreams. So when we lose our ability to dream, to imagine, to conjure, we lose our ability to hope.

I know that every time I dream, there is the possibility that that dream won't turn out. Every time I imagine what could be, I know that it isn't what will be. I realize that every time I hold hope for a situation in my heart, there is a distinct reality that that hope will never be fulfilled.

And sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it hurts so much all we can do is become numb.

But I think the numbness, I think the lack of dreaming, I think the absence of hope- that is far worse. That losing our ability to hope and dream does far more damage to our soul.

Is it hard to relearn how to hope and dream like we did when we were fifteen? Absolutely. And I don't think the point is to go back to that type of dreaming completely. I think we need to dream adult dreams- dreams that are full of the hope we can feel despite the fact we know that life always isn't picture perfect or easy. Dreams that will occur with the knowledge that they might actually never be. And I think it takes far more courage and guts to dream this way.

But just because something is hard, doesn't mean its not worth it. I think that to relearn how to dream, how to have hope, I believe those are worth the effort they take.

fairy tales

As children, we grow up on fairy tales. We were told them before bed, we watched Disney make magical movies about them, and we acted them out as we played pretend as children.
For children, fairy tales are wonderfully magical stories full of hope and perfect happy endings. Stories full of princesses, princes, wicked queens who never win, fairy godmothers, elves and dwarfs.

However, most people do not know that fairy tales began as stories that were told to adults full of gruesome and cruel darkness. These stories were not intended for children in the least. Actually, most fairy tales came to be as stories women told as their way of rebelling against the constraints placed upon them by the restrictive societies they live in.
How is that something with a beginning and elements so dark within them have becomes something that children dream about and celebrate?

We treat fairy tales now as something to be achieved and as the perfect story to try and obtain, but in reality they were never meant for this purpose. To strive to try and achieve a fairy tale life is to try and strive to achieve something that doesn’t exist and was never intended to exist.
Fairy tales began as a way for the oppressed to speak out about what they suffered without actually doing so. These stories were their way of highlighting the dark truth of what they suffered. However, throughout the centuries we have squeezed the darkness out of these tales and replaced them with trivial light. And these stories, void of their original intent, are what we tell are children. And subsequently, what all children end up trying to achieve.

Now I love Disney’s Cinderella as much as the next person, but I’ve come to realize that life will never work like this particular version of a fairy tale. That things don’t always work out, that fairy godmothers don’t always prevail, and that sometimes there is no perfect solution or happy ending.

I’m not saying that life is devoid of happiness or magical moments, but I’m saying that setting our children up to strive for a perfect “fairy tale” ending that actually never existed is unrealistic and unfair.

Life is hard. Life is messy. Life is occasional dark and sometimes cruel. And we should not shield ourselves from that truth. We should recognize and acknowledge it. We should learn how to survive those times, so that we can come out triumphant on the other side.

I guess what I’m saying is that we should all realize that life is not a fairy tale in the way we know it. That there will be darkness and hardship and sometimes no perfect happy ending.
But I’m also trying to say that this doesn’t mean life isn’t wonderful, magical, or full of wonderful moments.

I think what makes life so amazing is that constant contrast of light and dark. That despite the hard times, we are able to still recognize what good there is. That despite the hurt, we are still able to feel hope and joy. That even when we are broken, we know that someday there will be wholeness again. I think if we are just honest enough with ourselves to stop expecting a Disney fairy tale life, we might end up more satisfied with the tale we are actually living in.

Top Five: Things I Wish You Could Give People for Christmas

1. a positive attitude
2. rest- wouldn't it just be great if you could give somebody a full nights sleep? I know some people who desperately need thing.
3. perspective
4. hope
5. the ability to see themselves as God does

I have a book that I am doing that is supposed to help me with writing. What it really does is ask great questions that help you put emotions and memories onto paper. I'm trying to be more disciplined about hand writing things these days. Anyway, I'm rambling.

Today one of the questions I worked on was centered around high school and friendships. It asked "who did you hang out with in high school? who did you spend the most time with? were they good influences or bad influences? what did you learn?"

Those are some really great questions and it was kind of fun to go back and think about high school. As much as we all complain about how bad high school was, it also was wonderful and fun.

But it started me thinking about the high schoolers I work with. So much of what I do with my youth group and how I interact with them comes from what I learned from spending time with my youth group in high school. When I dream about what I want our youth group to look like and what I want these kids to experience when they come together, I find that I want them to experience what I had. I want them to experience the friendship, the support, the pranks, the laughter, the love, the learning. Sure we didn't all get along all the time, but when push came to shove we did.

Sometimes I forget how much my past really influences my present. And how my experiences shade what I want for others to experience. I don't think this is a bad thing. Obviously, what we've lived is what we try to recreate for others- especially if it was a wonderful experience.

But I do think that I need to try and remember that it can't always be the same. And won't always be the same. And that my teenagers will form a group identity of their own. And I hope that in ten years they can look back and feel the same joy at their memories as I do at mine.