Take My World Apart

My first week in North Carolina is progressing with wet enthusiasm. The edge of Ernestro is just striking Greensboro, and I am grounded today from my flight training at Southeast Airport. For those of you who need an update on my whereabouts, I am currently working on my private pilot's license. I am staying with my wonderful and generous grandparents for the next three weeks, trying to get about half of my license done. I'm sitting in the kitchen, sipping on Gramps' delicious GT, typing away in the awful background of Fox News - my grandparent's favorite biased news station. After Colbert and Stewart, the show just has absolutely no credibility. Gramps, the major proponent for the flying adventure, is a private VFR (visual flight rules) pilot. My dad has his IFR (I for instrument), which just means that he can fly in less visibility because of his ability to work certain instruments. To receive your license, you basically follow this pattern: 20 hours of flight instruction (after about 10 you can solo); 20 hours of solo. In this you complete a solo and dual cross-country, night flight, and several tests - written, oral, and practical.

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace,

The soul that knows it not, knows no release

From little things,

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

The sound of wings.

How can Life grant us boon of living, compensate

For dull grey ugliness and pregnant hate

Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold the restless day,

And count it fair.

-"Courage" by Amelila Earhart, 1927

The edge of Ernestro is just striking Greensboro, and I am grounded today from my flight training at Southeast Airport. Grandpa and I are lounging around the house today - I am watching endless DVD's to study for my written knowledge exam that I'm taking this weekend, and Gramps switches from the Weather Channel to the Wall Street Journal and a book I gave him "The 100 Greatest Flying Stories Ever Told." I am now 2.5 hours into my hours, after two lessons with Mr. George Joyce, a 70-something retired professional pilot with more hours under his belt than I've attended school. He is especially Southern - a certain brand of rural North Carolinians. His son is a Southern Baptist Minister - after he discerned I was Christian, he keeps making innumerable flying/Holy Spirit analogies - which please and humor me. He shaves his hair close to his head, and has an enormous tendency to go on and on when we talk on the ground before and after the lessons, making parallel after parallel regarding how flight mirrors the way one should live. In the air, he is incredible. He has already given me great control over the plane (a Cessna 150 [N8477J(uliet)]- painted in the West Point colors gray, black, and gold... the "cop" plane according the mechanic's 22-year-old daughter), and is very concise and professional inside the cockpit. There are so many things to remember! When my head is focused on the instruments, confident in my handling of the controls, my brain is not concerned with the actual situation in the air (relation to horizon, traffic approaching, weather), and vice versa. But every minute flying is another minute of practice. Life is good at 2500 feet - I am lost in the creation of the Lord, left dangling by grace in the kingdom of the sky, with this new skill and discipline comes a new and beautiful interaction with the earth.

"MAY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH AND THE THOUGHTS OF MY HEART BE EVER ACCEPTABLE TO YOU, OH GOD OF ALL."

One of the wonderful stories Mr. Joyce told was this - he was explaining the importance of the Owner's Flight Manual for gas readings, weight, capacities, etc., and called it my Bible of flight. In his career as a flight instructor for airline pilots, he would ask a professional a question referring to the manual, and the pilot would respond he didn't know. Mr. Joyce would exclaim, "You want to be a pilot of this jet, and you don't know what the manual says?! You call yourself a professional, and you don't know the answer the manual gives? That's the WORD." Now, he didn't draw the parallel, but I saw the conclusion implied. Do I call myself a Christian, and still not read scripture every single day? Do I not know what the text itself says regarding concept after concept? I spend enough time thinking/talking about God...

I have been dancing inside this internal theological conversation the last few days. I have been reading a great deal still, and many thoughts have been prompted by media presented to me. My mind is very hungry. Last night I was babysitting the neighbors' 13-year olds (who really didn't need a sitter) and the parents, Cindy and Ron, run the tightest Christian ship I have ever seen. There is no cable because the parents came home one day and saw the 17-year-old, Amanda, watching Titanic with Christina (13). They have no Internet either. Trevor (13) is not allowed to play Sim City on the computer. They only have Bible movies and Disney/old classics in their video case. They are all homeschooled. Cindy has gone to Iraq once already to teach Christian Kurdish women how to live from a Biblical perspective. Very strange. There is no trust of the parents toward the kids. I've been playing with Amanda since I was a baby visiting my grandparents, but only now have I noticed the acultural living of the children. I made pizza and we all talked about life and their activities. The twins are very normal and sociable, eager to please. After dinner we picked out a movie, and, instead of seeing "Pirates of the Carribean" for the nteenth time, I chose "Left Behind." Mom told me about the book series, and as they had sold millions and millions of copies, and it seemed all of non-New England was reading it, I was VERY intrigued. WHAT A MOVIE. It takes contemporary life, and normal characters, and exacts Revelation literally onto our society. I was absolutely fascinated. I have never considered taking the so-called rapture word for word. It is a vision! John of Patmos has a revelation and writes it down. A vision, just like a dream, has symbols. Kirk Cameron, the young star of Growing Pains was the lead, surviving in a world of the Anti-Christ and people disappearing to Heaven. I was really shaken by the film. I am borrowing the books from the Brooks' library this Sunday. If nothing else, it is at least a thrilling story.

The following question keeps popping up in my head - how serious is religion? How serious am I about my faith? At Lawrenceville, my beautiful fellowship groups gave me a sense of purpose in the community, but now here I am, facing a LIFEtime. There is no community that I will live in forever. Choosing God is so much bigger than what I've thought. My eyes were so absorbent on the idea of service inside LV bounds, on progress on campus. I had a weird thought today. I was walking in the Greensboro arboretum, cooling down from my run and sore left IT band, and I was asking myself why I kept finding myself in situations that were compromising to my value system. Without the structure of L'ville, I have been losing myself more often.

it matters not how straight the gate
how charged the punishment the scroll
i am the master of my fate
i am the captain of my soul
-w.e. henley

I am so grateful for the freedom my parents have given me. They trust me - I've earned that. I'm so glad I was able to choose a value system for myself, and not have them shove it down my throat, like it sort of is next door. I have the ability to choose for myself whether to be righteous or ungodly in my behavior. God tells us that we will never be perfect, our friends tell us, our family. So why do I feel like I have to be? I have never been perfect. No matter what I do, no matter how much scripture I read, no matter what - I will always sin. What an intense word. But I mean that - I can never be Jesus. I can emulate him, as I see in those I love trying to do, but I can never be him. But yet, in God's eyes, we are still his children, his people. We are worthy of Jesus' resurrection, we are worthy of grace for the sole reason that we are God's creation. Which is frustrating, because my actions don't prompt redemption, only my sheer acknowledgement that I want to recognize myself as a part of this faith's system of belief.

I am so frustrated in my humanity - my desire for quick gratification in relationships, in love, in work. My mind makes up scenarios where I can use rationale instead of courage. I want often to fall during a run - to rather justify myself in pain, real, visible pain instead of living. I fantasize of a glorious death so that I don't have to face the realities of living a real life for God. So that I don't have to feel guilty when comparing my own world to those who actually do suffer. So that I can live without frustration and fear, so that I can be with God in Heaven, and KNOW for sure, that my beliefs, my value system is scary it is so real with its implications. So that I don't have to acknowledge the love that exists around me in dozens of family members and friends... so I can pretend I am not loved, so that God does not touch me. Why is redemption frightening to me lately?! Why am I incredibly intimidated by the life I want to live? Why am I so afraid of what I could be if I only gave myself fully to God's purpose? Could I lead in the honest way I have only glimpsed?

I lay down my life and I put it before you -

All that I am, is in your hands.

And I'm not going to question why you're so faithful

Or why you've given me the blessing that you have.

All I need is a love to come and fill this heart of mine.

My heart is a desert that has gone dry...

I need your love to get me by.

-Shawn McDonald

I keep thinking lately, "Could I be saved? Am I worthy?" Which is weird, because I have already, offered my life to the world of God and his purpose - a multitude of times! I have prayed often... why am I so unsure of my salvation? Is this some evil force, making me think that I would rather keep myself from God, and be miserable, than do what my heart longs for, and really dive in? Spirituality fluctuates - just like any other human concept. Just like attitude, weight, and emotions, my soul flirts with the lines of mysticism, Christianity, and religion - jumping into powerful relationships, and leaping back into dark places. I am no longer in a state that I can deny what I have felt - I cannot deny God. But I wonder - how far will I go? Where are the theological rules for my life as it is? Why didn't God write, "Alice, half an hour on the Internet a day is plenty" in his Gospels? Passing thought, really. I'm desperate for answers lately... and I know where to find them, which is the crazy thing... I am also thinking, "All I need is You! That's all!" As if, if only I could have God in my life, I would be fine. God is in my life! "I have called you by name... and you are mine."

I don't know how to play with literal Christianity - the hardball of Left Behind has left me feeling, well, Left Behind. Confused about how to play with my own liberal, internal, action-based faith. Amy Julia talked about literalistic Christianity, which my mind clings to - a translation of the Bible in which every book is taken for what it is - a story, a narrative, a prophesy, a vision. My life is the only full story I know. It is filled with so much beauty, I am pained that I feel troubled in it, guilty. I want to lift this all up in prayer, and have, but it feels forced. Striving to be like God, to follow the Word and what we know he wants from us... my heart cries for it, but it is so hard. It is so painful to be a Christian! To know what is Right and true for my life... and to not choose that consistently - both internally and externally - hurts like, well, like Hell. It is time to get out of the boat and walk on the water again. It is time Believe again. Believe with me in a life of love. What are we, of any faith, without it? God is my crutch, my lifeboat, my friend, my creator, our enveloping air. I am deep in some sort of odd anxiety to move myself to read and practice scripture more consitentely, but am constantly frustrated and deterred by something - whether it be the jewelry wearing televangilists I watched last night, late, or the weird parenting of the neighbors. Why am I allowing these people to take away from my experience of God? Why is everyone reading about homosexuals and salvation, but no one is reading about LOVE and GRACE and leaving materialism behind! What Bibles are they reading?


I really feel encompassed by the Earhart poem above. MY bitter joy has heard the sound of wings in Colorado, in the skies flown by the 150. What I need for the day, for this complex darkness of confusion and doubt, of paradoxical joy, is courage. Courage to know that I can move toward this wide expanse of unknown and that God will walk by me through the tunnel of life. "Draw close to him, and he will draw close to you." - James 4:8.

"Be still and know that I am God."

Have faith, Alice.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless falls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew-

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

-John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

the greatest commandment!

"LIVE IN LOVE"

Let us walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, in offering and Sacrifice to god.

-communion prayer.

Recently Read:

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt - Anne Rice : Awful, really. Neat thoughts, but all of the best ones are actually taken from the gnostic gospels - i.e. Jesus the boy turning clay sparrows into real birds - Beautiful! Poetic! The story portrayed Christ as a confused little boy struggling with the ideas of his power and godliness. Rice, in my opinion, was presumptuous and hasty in writing out the flow of Jesus' thoughts. Children have the capacity for amazing spiritual lives, but the Rice Christ was not as impressive, nor articulated well. Rating: C-

Currently:

The Scarlet Letter - N. Hawthorne: A classic finally entered. My only complaint: have to look up "ignominy." ;0) Fabulous story... who is Hester's lover? Awful self-destruction of the deformed husband. Time will tell.