Leshem Shamayim: “For the sake of heaven.”

Today marks exactly three weeks since Beth and I arrived at His Mansion. Running is getting slightly easier… today I ran a course to a reservoir a little over 3 miles away and back, able to manage the hills, even after last night’s Tai Kwon Do lesson. As much as my body has adjusted to 10.30p-11.30p bed time and 4 am runs, this is the first week that I can actually say I feel a sense of belonging up here, like I am more than an observant part of the family, but an active, contributing member. Individual connections are forming and relationships are being built through shared interests and time spent together (this week a lot of my quality conversations have been when assigned to work crew). This weekend will be my second weekend off, the first to really spend time with other staff members because my first weekend off was the one just before HCC.

Classes continued yesterday… the Thursday class is a reading and discussion of Larry Crabb’s Inside Out, reminding me of the time when Mum and I tried to go through that book. I didn’t verbalize a whole lot in yesterday’s reading (we go around taking turns reading and stopping at breaks in the book to discuss if there is anything to discuss), but I scribbled notes and thoughts evoked by the book in a similar conversational writing tone (as I am perpetually found doing in my notebook when my hands are not otherwise engaged). Crabb discussed some things in the introduction and section of the first chapter we got through that are rather near and dear to my heart, so I thought it worthwhile to share what stuck out to me, especially in relation to the dialog I have been sharing between my brothers and sisters on the hill and my currently invisible Jesus.

Reading about Crabb’s perspective of the “aching soul,” one that is filled with an unexplainable and unquenchable longing, I was encouraged about the drive within myself. I am still mulling this over and discussing it with Jesus, but I think its very true that there is yet an unfilled space within all of us, Christian and non-Christian, though for the lover of Jesus, there is a definitive sense of hope that Jesus is the fulfillment of the space in our souls. We have Him already… I dare say I can even feel His presence now and again… at least I know it when I don’t feel it. Reminds me of a quote someone shared the other day, that trust is moving from what I see to what I know… because my eyes are usually pretty dim here, and I can’t yet see Jesus. I have been told that the lifestyle I choose to live is intense and high-maintenance, and yet that has caused some to question in my perpetually running state, what I am running from. I have been asking the question of myself… looking back at my heals over the course of the day at least currently, after three weeks of being here and facing some fears, I think I can say I am not running from anything, I am running towards something. C.S. Lewis wrote a lot about the same longing… I say it is to touch, to see Jesus… and realizing that this longing cannot be filled here.

Over the past semester, I have been learning about the way Jesus does things… less is more, first shall be last, leader shall serve… all sorts of pictures like those have been played out before me. And in each one of them, I see a theme of hope that moves through death and into life. It sometimes sadly amuses me to see that it takes drastic valleys in life to awake within myself the realization that Jesus is still not quite perceivable, and yet I love Him, I talk to Him… I look for Him. Crabb talked about the tendencies of American churches to exchange our nail-scarred Jesus for one who passively responds with immediate healing. As far as the ache in the soul goes, Crabb resolutely, almost too firmly said it will never be satisfied here…. And that could diminish a person’s hope. I look down at my own scars and think of Jesus’… how He was always pushing the edge as a man to expand our imaginings of love. That definitely hurts… and as a person in a tangible reality, I long for something strong and permanent to base myself in… an unfulfilled hope is an open door for growth, but also a place of unsteadiness, as Jesus has had to pry things out of my little girl hands that were once good for me, but lost their goodness when I desired them more than Him.

Here on this hill, I am learning that permanence is found in that unfulfilled hope, because it won’ remain that way, and the joy of learning to love more and more as the self in me is destroyed as often as it rears its ugly head from the casket. My sisters and brothers in sharing life through a very close community here remind me of that in everything I do in life… from journaling and conversation to tai kwon do. The runs I leave up to my spirit’s imagination and Jesus. Throughout this weekend, I am hoping to explore the goodness of earth and how even here we can have glimpses and moments of heaven… and how that factors into the hope driving me. I guess yesterday really did drive home that as much I have the one I have been longing for all my life, I am still desperately running after Him too.

Seeking the Face of my Jesus,
Hannah

Quite frequently I reach a point in the day where I know sleep would be a prudent decision, yet I cannot seem to make it because my mind is so awake. I had an interesting 1 hour conversation with one of my fellow interns with evening, a young lady majoring in political science, on a combination of my field and hers… our personal philosophies meeting our mutual (yet distinct) faith in very like manners… and from the conversation spun thoughts and philosophizing… more that I would hope to process before resigning to sleep, but I am running at 4am again tomorrow… I cannot give up that one luxury I afford myself daily. It is the time after I have laid down my soul with others all day previously where I can take it upon my back and run, scattering it in the wind as I voice to Jesus until all the cares and burdens I was bearing Him from others are consumed by a fiery joy.

The day on the hill began that way, and every moment of it was savory in a certain flavor: from an uncertain position as a temporary work crew leader to searching for the gun for the power washer after lunch, conversation while cleaning the water treatment shed to laughing over dinner: this is my life today, is it what I want it to be? I have stopped asking that question and taught myself to say “Yes, of course,” but at times I wonder whether or not my apparent contentment is mere complacency. After today of a truly rapturous joy in almost every moment of a possibly mundane life, I have decided it is not, because the yearning lives in me for more than that momentary something or other. Not as if I am being all Platonic and reaching after ethereal forms to the degradation of this life… not at all, I am choosing to view life as an embodiment and action of the faith I imagine, for the belief must be creative to be of any use.

I have no place in my heart for stale religion… and while that has been easy for me to maintain in the solidarity and confinement of my own mind, I am finding people to be the dynamic influence of this walk of life. How much do I really love Jesus in the midst of discussion of an issue bothering one person about another… in loving both and seeking to uphold a pure relationship without gossip? How much will I trust that Jesus knows the weakness of my spirit when I feel words that should be voiced to a significantly older individual and I am tempted rather to be silent and take responsibility upon myself? Where is faith enacting with my life? How much am I letting it be real…what is real?

I find it interesting the way some things once viewed as drudgery can become the most exciting.. all situations and contexts in life are colored only according to our perceptions of the people in them, I am convinced. I am growing into my own dynamic on the little hill, having heard from others’ mouths how I affect and realizing how I am affected… it will be interesting to see how angelic we can maintain some relationships. Plans for the weekend have changed from original hopes of off campus somewhere near Boston, but I think that will allow for contemplation and discussion in this new sphere of group love I am just beginning to see develop around here, Sometimes I am still reaching out my hands feeling for Jesus, but He is there, and as He rocks me to sleep and fills my mind with dreams, I will anticipate running hand in hand with Him tomorrow morning.

In eager expectation of His face,
Hannah

Today was my first day of classes and study, rather bright and inspiring altogether… a gorgeous morning, let me describe it to you as I wrote in my journal to Jesus this morning: “I smiled when I felt the glow of your smile today, my Jesus, in the warmth of a burning orange ball clothed in the misty garments that blanketed not just the sky, but robes of foggy glory spilling off a cloud throne into the court beneath, majestic, kingly, mirroring Your glory. I was in awe, breathless, and in wonder at You. I think I felt in love again.” It’s little moments like that as I sometimes verbally wonder aloud to Jesus that I catch pictures in nature that remind me of Him… as my friend here Melissa calls it, He is romancing me because He knows my heart is looking. I chatted with my friend Matt about the longings for more than this life, and he sufficiently reassured me that such laments and longings are to be expected because the perfect has not been fully realized. There seems such a thin layer, degree of separation between what is and what will be: between the tangible reality of now and the intangible. Somehow my life here on this hill, this very day is affecting and being affected by two interactive senses, physical and spiritual. I guess I say interactive because I think what I do to my body will affect how my spirit is, and vice versa. Forgive the theology, it came gushing out.

I wonder of each person I have looked at today, each person I have smiled at, glanced upon, sat beside, passed something to… interacted with in any matter: why are you here and where are you going? The question was posed to me in an intern meeting yesterday, just to chew on: and it has made me think, even in conversation this evening about the effect of my existence on this hill beyond the here and now… of course, this wonders the impossible question, how will this experience change my life? Well, we definitely talked about perception and potential in class today, mostly in regards to formative life decisions and how to guide a person who has developed false perceptions to those which will dictate constructive and personally beneficial behaviours. We mentioned the subject of imagination, which caught my attention especially… I scribbled something in my notes like imagination allows for transcendence of present perceived reality to a new reality. A new reality, more than here. I keep asking myself why must there be more… isn’t now enough?

The Heaven book I just finished by C.S. Lewis encouraged me that my constant pushing of an edge is Ok… reminds me of a concept from a book series called His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman that I thoroughly enjoyed about 6 years ago; that of worlds so close together, they were in fact inside of each other, just separated by thin layers of mere “dust”… and all that was needed to connect the worlds was a mere slice of a particular knife, a subtle knife. We are the users of such knives in our daily lives… one side of the blade is physically deadly and can slice through any earthly substance. The other is a sort of dull to physical sense but cuts through all sort of spirit, I think we are wielders of this very knife which cuts both ways, and has been entrusted to our care for usage as discerned by the spirit which we hope to be guiding us. This knife I think is a picture of our lives, how we engage our beings with others. However we perceive the world around us will predominantly predict how we will engage ourselves, these dangerously edged knives, with the people all around us.

Classes and the subsequent time of engagement in conversation and activity with others challenged my perceptions of life and people and world. I noted earlier that I tend to reduce us as people to piles of chemical and grey matter, but today with that picture of the sun striking me as an imaginative glimpse of Jesus, I couldn’t help but look for the souls with the bodies today. Both make the person, and both will be immortal. More challenge to love my Jesus outside of myself. I don’t always know the “right” words to give or the most purposeful actions, but I saw a heart today that needs touching. Even if I don’t perceive my full purpose of living on this hill right now, the moments I have for collection and reflection as I write this evening, I am going to start imagining with an open door. With an academic personality, I have been craving a subject to study and engage my mind and heart with beyond the engagement of the body, and I think today I realized that is to be loving Jesus in community. I wrote to a friend earlier about something I read, “The plural of ‘Jesus Follower’ is church…Church is not an occurrence. It is a design. Jesus never meant for His disciples to be alone.” From Jesus With Dirty Feet by Don Everts.

As I search out my perceptions of community, reforming how I thought I was to love Jesus from a perception and position of solidarity and isolation to one of the “two or more” mentality, I find myself being stretched and bent by the weight that people bring to my life. But I am learning that to bear others’ burdens, I don’t need to have the words to give back to someone. I can listen and allow the perception of love by listening alone, and speaking only as my heart is pulled to do so. I realized last week in HCC course that many of the perceptions by which I find purpose in life have been an instable framework, because they are not grounded in reality… nor been permitted to grow through imagination. I think hope is born through the ability and gift to imagine what could be. I am trying to develop and encourage perceptions of purpose and meaning by loving and interacting with others… realizing that my purpose in life is to love like the blood of Jesus is running through my own veins… and like the one I’m loving has that holy blood as well. I am learning more and more about purpose, and finding the more it focuses on self, the less meaningful it seems.

I also decided today reflecting upon class that people are fundamentally narcissistic and that the majority of our relationships are strivings to find reflections of our own souls in other people. As Proverbs 27.19 says, “As water reflects face to face, so one human heart reflects another.” I think we all, in our human desire for acceptance, realize a need to understand ourselves through others (and so have this sense of loneliness). This is where I think Jesus gets particularly marvelous. Something about His Spirit residing in us reflects us back the image of self we need to see as well as transcends that image so we can reflect back His own image, all at once… I think. Forgive me for getting so excited about that, but if Jesus is truly a body of all sorts of diverse people, I am ecstatic that our diversity refracts Him differently, altogether making one Person.
Enough theology for the evening, I have lost some already.

Filled with excitement over life with and in Jesus,
Hannah

Yesterday was the beginning of my third full week at His Mansion… my secluded Hill community.. where I am learning about myself and my purpose in the desert as well as about my fellow man, relationships, etc. Hopefully more of that learning is through experience then intellect, for I realized last week that my relationships with others are often hindered by my intellectualization of my fellow man. I reduce us as humans, I told a friend, to a pile of chemical reactions and mental processes. But we people are more than that, aren’t we; of greater value than a test tube, of more worth and status than a mere biological experiment. Love is not just a chemical reaction in the brain… I am beginning to believe that love is a necessary component for faith and purpose, necessary parts of every person’s existence, I think.

But this weekend was a sabbatical from the type of writing I was doing all last week… there is still so much to soak in, but at least my mind is no longer on overload. Scribbling between notes in my journal and in my course material, I compiled a jumble of thoughts that will eventually become worked out through the remainder of my time here on the hill. Each day here I find myself challenged with an individual pursuit of purpose: why am I here, what am I doing to contribute communally, how is the community impacting me, what will the long-term effects of here and now be. It’s interesting to live life in a rather isolated community, knowing that the cares and concerns of today will differ from those of tomorrow (things change so quickly here), I found myself questioning purpose this past weekend. For a person like me who can grow very focused on the details of now, the future can be excluded from my radar screen.

Personal goals of writing and contemplation are necessarily set aside to move through the day engaging in life with others. Over the weekend with more free time than regimented schedule, some of the girls and I were able to share more of our perspectives and appreciate each other’s artistry, be it drawing, photographing, or writing. I am still trying to grasp a concept of “fellowship…” looking to continue the same sort of meaningful conversation I engaged in at school, at least the same quality, because of course the subject matter may be different. Saturday night, designated “family night,” all of us brothers and sisters gathered for a bonfire and a combination of ever imaginable sport: at different times, I was kicking around a soccer ball, throwing a Frisbee, catching a football, or pitching a softball. While doing something alongside of someone can still allow for separation of worlds, I found myself more readily exchanging conversation with those people I played with. Sunday was a relaxing, rainy day, so besides sorting through some projects I would love to chip away at, I searched for some quality reading material (didn’t find what I was looking for in terms of books in our library.

I am learning the skill of integrating conversation into work, finding that its impossible to get to know a person through one in-depth conversation. Learning how to get to know people is always an adventure as the endeavor changes with each new individual, and no system can be worked out. I guess Jesus is defying my systems by mere life events and teaching me to value and find room to love the individuals as I go. There are always new people on the hill, and even if not, there is always a sister or brother I can better get to know and appreciate… 8 weeks is far shorter than it still sounds right now.

Seeking Jesus through His People,

Hannah

I am sitting in the Arizona room (where staff can hang out on our times off) with my friend Aaron (female) after a very full week of HCC classes. By the time our final course was completed today, my brain was out of room and the processing mechanisms a little over-worked from attempting to take in and digest simultaneously. Aaron and I both are thankful for a weekend of rest to still our minds from a constant influx of information, so we enjoy the silence and solitude of this room apart from the “crowds” (26 other people can hardly be a crowd) with whom we have shared spatial existence for the past week. With some I have shared life… several young women were in housing complex adjacent to mind, so we shared conversation, some thoughts… and mostly just glances across the tables during class. It was a busy week on this hill.

Only 2 weeks ago I first came up here, nervous and unsure, but it feels quite like home now. It was so strange being separated from my sisters residing here over the past week… I’ve seen them at dinner and other brief interactions… they’ve encouraged me through sharing hugs, brief words, etc… I think some have felt how intense this week really was. It was quite the formal introduction, to have similar exercises and activities in self-exploration… as I termed, soul excavation and archaeology. Ah… I must break for moment to “verbally” attest to the beautiful symphony of rain pattering on the roof over my head… its strains run in cycles, but it is sporadic, all gentle and soothing. “Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me…” a song we sang in prayer and share comes to mind as I can imagine the feeling of this rain if I were to resurrect myself from this chair and run barefoot into the yard. Sounds like so much fun, but my mind is to heavy for such lighthearted childish fun. So I will keep imagining and enjoy the thought if grace pouring over me like that.

This week has been an exploration in grace. I began the week with a little fear and trepidation that afterwards I might join up as a resident here… life was anticipated to be overwhelming and wearing me out of myself. As I threw myself into the classes which required communal exposure of self and exploration of past. I began looking for the work of the Holy Spirit in the middle of some obvious tension: I am in the middle of discussing a lot of things with Jesus, my Mum spent the week up here exploring for some healing as well. We’ve had some needful discussions, and are working on expanding our relationship. Hope is a newly acquired asset for me lately… something I have been able to recount through my genogram exercise as well as sharing life with some of my new sisters here. I started speaking with Jesus two or three days ago about becoming like a child with my Jesus again. It’s been only a few days since He and I began conversing through my journal about taking each day as He gives it and learning that hope is something imagine and evoked for the future rather than remaining rooted in unpleasant past.

Though there is a lot to process through and extract out of this week in order to speak more closely with Jesus through the very different community here. I have compared it to a desert, a place alone to face my demons, and in these past few weeks I have begun doing that in a very different context of comfortability than I am used to. The closeness of people living together is a different environment even then school, but these are people who will help me learn to appreciate the hope I have learned and grow in the development of life with others and Jesus. Jesus has been showing me Himself through the girls around me who after two short weeks of living here and struggling with the communicative life with my own family and the family of Christ that I am learning how to love. May you see Jesus in the beauty of everyday life and the love that is available in the Spirit living within us all, though we rarely abide enough in Him to make daily decisions of love towards one another. May our hearts be filled with an increased desire and explore.

In His Resting Arms,
Hannah

Yesterday was the final full day of lectures… today we just have a half day and then some breathing space as we try and process and sort through all the information given to us. This has been a very introspective week, and I am ready to step out of myself. In the lectures, I have been taking informational notes in the binder provided but journaling my own reactions and thought processes side-by-side in my journal. I always enjoy remembering how Jesus crucified the old self in Him and as long as I let it hang there on the cross, I don’t have to live under it. I mean, I do when I think about it too much… whatever preoccupies my though directs my interaction with others, but I have come to the conclusion at the end of this week, while attempting to process so much, that the past no longer has to be alive and affecting me, but can fade away, leaving me to run closer into Jesus’ arms.

There seems to be such a gap between yesterday on our lectures discussing dysfunctional families, etc. and writing out the genograms Tuesday night. I’ve wrestled within myself over what to do with labels and titles I realized about the past. How much do they matter anymore, is that how they still are? I think it can be very easy for us to live in the past, even focusing on all this sort of stuff, like where we came from and how deeply it affected us. The healing philosophy here is to go back to and experience the pain in order to let God heal it. While I have thought about some of the things that were in my life when I was younger, I think there is a reason the Holy Spirit didn’t regurgitate memories I was dreading to reexperience… because I don’t need to feel them again right now to learn how to express through them. I am beginning to think that simple acknowledgement in order to forgive old grudges will be the best.

There is so much running through my head that I am trying to digest. I am thinking of Jesus at the end of all the pages I journalled and all the thoughts I poured out to consider… wow, even the volume makes my head hurt. I have opened myself up to the internal working of the Spirit… I know He has things to teach me as He and I probe through my insides… but I am looking forward to another resurrection. Every day, more and more, it could either be a struggle to leave the past behind or just set aside the selfishness of today and run into Jesus’ arms, turning to stretch out His hands to another. He has brought me safe thus far, and His grace will lead me home. I anticipate remembering and looking for His grace and hope and love as I wade through everything from this week.

May Jesus be the central thought directing each of our lives as we daily die to self in the moments of every day and run with revitalized love for Him.

Seeking His Radiant Face,
Hannah

What a week. This morning I briefly recounted yesterday’s struggle to compose the genogram and timeline… it was a good process for me—something I’d never done before and didn’t relish the thought of doing, but as yesterday progressed, realized that would be the only way to identify some issues, namely the one of feeling I have been talking about. For one of those few moments in my life when I realized an inability to feel (during yesterday’s sessions), I caught a glimpse of myself from the outside in and realized what people meant in trying to tell me I have been cold, unapproachable , distant. Maybe all of that is true… over the past several years I have learned to convert feeling into thought, which is hardly a way of loving people. I spoke with Jesus briefly about that rich young man again in Mark whom my Jesus just looked at and loved. I think feelings have come up in conversation a lot this week because He and I have been talking abut love.

The Mansion family on this hill recognizes that there are weaknesses in all of us, and that we all struggle with the question of love. Looking at these genograms with some of the girls I shared with as well as my friend Aaron (a girl, yes) who has been sharing some harder moments of memory in life with my the past two days as I composed my thoughts—I noticed we as women all struggled to feel and give love. There were so many places we looked for acceptance and approval outside of our Holy Father… some of us didn’t know Him then—some of us learned through life experience to cope differently. I remembered my life searching for a purpose, and realizing love was engaged in a part of my purpose, but not knowing how to interact with Love; realizing I make Him far too tangible or too two-dimensional in my intellect. Jesus is not limited to my thought life, and the words He gives me of love are true regardless of my life experiences: I too often have laden His words of love with conditions to the graces and made the whole process of loving other people far more complicated than it really needs to be. Reflecting through the process of transcribing my genogram caused me to realize this.

In a way, I felt exposed, forced to trust a group of 4 women whom I have barely met with some of the most intimate details of my romance with Jesus. Something about speaking it was good for me though, and perhaps I just needed an audience to voice these things to Jesus: it made me realize how desperately I have spent my life chasing after every fleeting glimmer of hope, but even through severe difficulties over the past 4 years, I have settled into a place of reimagining hope even just this past spring semester. I feel a freedom with Jesus and a connection through meeting Him in a special way that we never had before… and I attribute a large part of that to the way people have drawn me into life by love and how I have learned to reciprocate some of that love. Going through my writing and speaking of this showed me just how much of the story I still need to be honest with before Jesus—recognizing lies and choosing to believe truths—before He can work through me to bring about a whole life able to love.

I have ached, more than anything as I came here to serve at His Mansion, to share love and openness with my sisters on this Hill. I am learning slowly, but I can feel Jesus working. Having my Mum here, “old” relationships… ones that have some serious stuff to work on… has been challenging this week. But she and I have started really talking. I am asking Jesus for more hope, to invigorate my imagination, because I have been tending to give up too quickly. Genogram inspired my disorientated soul to seek new language, bounce things in community… and wrestle with Jesus about feelings, love and openness before my Holy Lover and Heavenly Father. It’s terrifying and exciting both at once. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

In the Hope of my Jesus,
Hannah

I hope this does not become an ongoing habit of posting a day after and skipping the morning run. The past two days I have been mentally traveling through memories from what I tend to think of my forgotten years… the past… until the wee hours of the morning. When writing about the genogram assignment yesterday, I was racking my brain to come up with some way to re-evoke feelings and thoughts that occurred in formative fashion when I was 11-13 years old. I did ask Jesus to help me remember, but we never got to the level of feeling I know is in their somewhere. At 1.15 am, I was still trying to put into some order a timeline of my life… and was ending in about 2003… though some things I remember more than others.

All throughout the sessions yesterday on chemical addications,etc. I was rather disengaged, contemplating the morning information on truth, lies, beliefs and behaviours. We were told that behaviours stemmed from beliefs… I am still working through the process of sorting out how that works in my mind (there is too much information for me to absorb and process in my own life, though I am making a flying leap at an attempt to), so I think I am going to have to encounter some beliefs to get rid of some behaviours. That whole process confuses me, because it is sorting through a realm of information that my mind cannot evoke, the feelings. Somehow I skipped through feelings on a lot of behaviours I developed, so my thoughts and life are somehow disconnected.

All day yesterday, I was beginning to slowly pick out some of my beliefs that are wrong… maybe I will spend more time on that some day, and work on the beliefs themselves. Its hard to comprehend beliefs as the core to every behaviour, though I suppose all my life I have believed that they are. I encountered a lot more confusion and disconnect in my life then anything else yesterday, and though I made the genogram graph, sharing it this morning and actually feeling it are going to be different entirely. If you think to, please pray for me, because I have a sense this needs to happen even deeper than my understanding of how this works… Jesus is breaking my hidden self open.

Seeking the Face of my Jesus,
Hannah

Yesterday was the first full day of courses… and I am sure to fill up at least one journal and many pages of notes during this week. So much transpired in my heart and mind that after dinner, my energy was pretty depleted. Beginning tonight, we are going to be working on homework assignments to share in the courses… the most dreaded one being the genogram, a look into a window of my life between the ages of 11 and 13. Maybe the assignment feels impossible because yesterday evening, one of the staff members shared his genogram testimony with us… and as soon as he began speaking, a feeling like some of the weight of his life his me and rested heavily until his speech confronted hope and embraced it. This genorgram assignment, however, threatens me with a lot of very uncomfortable things: sharing things I have always felt unnecessary to voice, giving voice to some things which are unknown, and uncovering many things which my memory cannot recall.

Jesus and I talked about this genogram… especially after all the classes yesterday like “Inner Healing,” “Spiritual Warfare,” etc. I realized that I felt just like a picture that has sporadically run through my imagination since I first read the Chronicles of Narnia ages and ages ago: In the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, two of the original children, Edmund and Lucy, return to Narnia with their selfish, miserable cousin, Eustace Scrubb, quite by accident through magic. The children find themselves already embarked in an adventure on the roaring seas with their good friend, Prince Caspian, seeking to visit the islands beyond Narnia and seek seven lost lords of Narnia. On one of these islands, Eustace particularly gives over to his selfishness.. desiring his own rest and pleasure rather than the good of all in helping to repair the ship after a sea monster attack. Wandering into a dragon’s cave filled with treasure, Eustace becomes greedy and falls asleep with the gold. The image that ran through my mind was when Eustace, finding he had transformed into a dragon when he slept, has proved himself changed from his formerly selfish existence, he aches to be rid of the dragon skin. After 3 attempts to tear off the skin and be transformed into his old self, Eustace miserably realize he cannot reverse the enchantment. But the great Lion Alsan comes to him and offers to remove it, with his claws. Eustace feels torn to pieces, ripped in shreds, but after Aslan’s claws have destroyed the dragon self, he sends Eustace into a pool to wash away the final shreds… and Eustace reemerges a changed boy.

I looked at myself as that dragon… maybe in a different way, but at least very self-contained. I worked for many years of my life to be extremely self-sufficient and hold both feelings and thoughts inside. In other words, I built a dragon out of myself. Perhaps protective, the dragon always turns selfish. And over the past 2 years intensely, 4 years gradually, I have been trying to strip away the layers and skins that contained me and inhibited me: but I knew leaving school it wasn’t enough, there is more work to be done. I can hardly believe I say all this only after the first day of class (and not wholly in anticipation of the genogram). Life here with community challenge and introspective takes me most every moment of those lectures, by the sheer fact of where I find myself before God’s throne with Jesus and in my own thought processes. One of the themes of thought yesterday was on openness… and understanding why the genogram felt so hard to me… and also realizing that for years and years and years, I have cut off most feelings as well. I sort of knew that before yesterday, but different questions asked and memories evoked as well. I guess this is part of the process of discover, as I was reading Brueggemann on Jeremiah on one of our breaks… the known must be destroyed to make room for the unimaginable.

So last night I did not get around to writing because immediately after the genogram testimony was shared, I was seeking a place to process everything I had just learned beyond my notebook.. one of the girls I have been getting to know, staying on as a 6 month intern with similar thoughts to mine: little rememberance, little desire to remember, shame at giving voice to some things, etc… and I shared some life until well after midnight. So no run this morning, and Jesus and I are OK with that for now… maybe some serious walking this afternoon. In some ways, life feels too serious not to engage it intensely, but as a counselor warned me yesterday, too much intensity can burn out the necessary feeling and not give room for the growth needed to take place. After resting and talking with Jesus, I am looking to a new day.

Seeking the Hands of Jesus,
Hannah

I have been enjoying the Brethren tradition of worship while here on the hill of His Mansion… sometimes during the singing and sharing, though, I have found myself pulling away into little reservoirs of thought… savoring some stillness before unleashing the torrential flood of my mind into the interactive part of my world which I have begun to realize is the “stepping out” part from thought to interaction: the line where my faith is tested and proved. Today was one of those days I found myself lost in thought in the middle of worship… a song that just made me smile about Jesus (sometimes, I consider Him incredibly romantic in the most unexpected choices of words). My mind drifted from thinking about Jesus to how I was with Him in the midst of everyone else who seemed lost in their sense of worship. I told Him maybe I wasn’t worshipping the same way, but I think He was OK with a dialog over a song. We discussed community as a factor in my personal worship, and what I deem my community to be: for so long, I have made community just the people I co-existed with… but after recent suggestion, I am tending to think of it as more the people I interact with in co-existence. Maybe they don’t even know it, but some people affect me in worship more than others.

I realized with Jesus today that my internal workings are very much externally affected… a sensitivity that runs deeply through my being, but one, which I have just begun to realize that I experience.  I have learned to appear so well blended with those around me that I appear to feel as everyone else when my heart can be the farthest place from worship. I don’t value appearance much anymore, but reality and wholeness: If I cannot be honest with at least Jesus and myself in regards to how I allow others to affect me, even in worship, I am not whole before all people. There will be a lot more exploring to be done this week in HCC class; we began the first courses this afternoon… about the history of His Mansion, the operations of the counseling techniques, etc. A lot of things we will engage in through HCC promise to stretch me as a person, forcing me more out of myself and more into myself at the same time. Like turning me inside out: I will be forced in thought by the ideas I am presented with to wrestle with my own being and identity, as well as share that with others… in the context of community. Perhaps there really are things to be healed and flushed out this week that I do not even currently perceive.

I wrote the first day I was here about transfiguration… and how I asked Jesus to do some sort of work like that in me through my time here. I realized today that I will only see Jesus and hear Him this week especially… and that transfiguration is going to take a lot of work, searching, and giving up on my part. I heard an analogy today that I think I am going to borrow and use for introspection over this next week, maybe the rest of my time on this Hill: of Lazarus, when he has died and been buried 3 days… when Jesus rolled away the stone and called Lazarus forth in his burial wrappings… and then told Lazarus’ sisters and friends to unwrap his burial clothes. So for me, I lived in a place before which I would call a grave of life… a place when I lost sight of hope. But Jesus drew me forth from that, partly by my community, partly in teaching me some of the need I didn’t perceive in community. But every person I encounter who has been in a similar place to me, are my Lazarus’ whom Jesus has imparted new life to if they take hold of His hope: I am not given the job of healing, but cleaning up a previously decomposing body after the resurrection.

I was also thinking today about who Jesus has made me to be… the whole question of purpose… and during a song for today… I thought about a practical and theological question I have been wrestling with… this life with Jesus. The Lazarus picture enabled me to conjure up an image in my mind: I have been crucified with Christ, so I have been buried like Lazarus… and now I am not alive, but Christ in me. My existence does not cease with death, because here I am right now… living, but not alive. For those who don’t enjoy the realm of theological play, this may be an insignificant paragraph. I do not have to consider myself divided, nor under the power of sin, because I am dead in the grave, being called forth by Jesus and it is His life in my “the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith in the son of God who loves me and gave Himself for me…” (Galatians 2.20). So the striving and working and ceaseless running… somehow maybe that can stop in terms of anxiety and concern, but not the effort. I will keep unwrapping other Lazarus’ in community with the life of Jesus while learning how I under my wrappings am being transfiguration.

May Jesus continue all of His work in us, with us, and through us.
In those Holy Working Hands,
Hannah