My Last Supper
I am coming to the end of my trip, reflection and anticipation and flight arrangements filling my head. Now, as at the beginning, I am forced to ask the question: how does one sum up a year of experience? I would look at it as a time of tremendous spiritual training and growth; a time in which God has begun to penetrate my heart and the roots of an authentic, intimate relationship with my Creator have begun to deepen.

Jesus has been my guide through this wilderness; my strong foundation, enabling me to stand on firm spiritual ground in a turbulent environment. I have found that Christ is brilliant, creative, challenging, fearless and ultimately satisfying; that he is compassionate, unpredictable, exhilarating and longs to radically transform my life.

I once looked at Christ, more or less, the way I initially looked at Mambo when I came down: boring, repetitive and over-played. But I do so no more. Slowly but surely, the mysterious and beautiful groove started to grow on me. First, I began tapping my feet- almost involuntarily. I guess this isn’t so bad after all. Pretty soon, I was in the mix, dancing and enjoying it all. This is pretty awesome; I wish I had known about it earlier. Now, I am in a new place of embrace, singing along and discovering new songs all the time.

Last Sunday I was blessed to share in a meaningful conversation and a delicious Taiwanese meal. Over dumplings, Rod, Tracy, Darin and I discussed the future. I sat back and enjoyed the green tea and air conditioning while Rod made some quick calls and arranged a trip to Tunisia in the fall. After enduring about thirty minutes of easy listening music and wrestling to pronounce his destination (he eventually had to spell it out), Rod turned to me and asked: “So what do you think you will do after four years of university?”

I had to pause and consider the whole four years thing...honestly, who knows? If you had asked me about my prospects four years ago, there is absolutely no way I would have guessed working voluntarily with a Christian Ministry in the Dominican Republic, living with a native family in one of the poorest slums in the country; speaking Spanish and eating rice and beans and shaving my head at a 70 peso barber shop- without Barbicide (who knows what kind of fun guys head in to get a cheap clip? Avoiding hongos has been a pleasant surprise).

I know that even in the last six months my motives for university have shifted considerably. Paul’s exhortations in Colossians have been bouncing around in my head at night: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly… Maybe I will encounter Shalom-reflective community at Trinity- maybe not. Perhaps I will meet a woman and fall in love- perhaps not. Hopefully I can get the President’s Scholarship to help pay for my education. Hopefully I can get off the waitlist for Art 181: Fundamenals of Design. Hopefully my roommate is tolerable. Yet I will not allow my hope to rest in any of these things, for any one of them could fade away in an instant. Knowing the context and original Greek of first Corinthians is only beneficial as it intensifies my connection to God.

I was encouraged and also challenged by the words Rod left me with as I exited his jeep that night: “I just want you to know that I’m proud of you. You’re going to tear it up man; you’ll be like the next C.S. Lewis or something. Just don’t forget about us, alright?”

“Who could?” I responded. I treasure this year, with all the perspectives and relationships and lessons I can draw on; I have gained so much. It has been utterly crucial and worthwhile. In the end, I am brought to contemplate one key truth. If the words of the Director of TEARS can bring me to emotional heights, what happens when the perfect, flawless words of my Savior begin to reverberate across the surface of my spirit? Shall I be skyrocketed to the moon? I have only heard the echoes, I have only felt the breeze rush past- a glimpse of glory. The mere whispers of Yahweh have been enough to divert my desire and capture my heart and thus draw me toward a path of devotion, discipleship, authority and obedience; the adventure has just begun.

Ego Death, New Life, and the Crucial-ness of Christ

I have one month left here in the Dominican Republic, and I feel like recent events have marked/ shaped a sort of re-emergence; a re-emergence of the gospel’s centrality and magnitude and a subsequent re-emergence of my true self. These two increase proportionately: the more Christ is the foundation, the more we come into harmony with the life God has for us. This, I feel, is one important message Jesus illustrates in Matthew 10:39: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

This has to do with the letting go of the ego- our life- and doing so for the sake of Jesus, seeing the gloriously transcendent and eternal life he offers far exceeds what we currently have. To find the sort of life he has in mind, we must begin to let go of our own life, shifting our hopes and force and passion and allegiances and loves- the fundamentals of our heart- to him.

Deepak Chopra writes: “the ego keeps its grip by making us feel needy and powerless. From this sense of lack grows the enormous hunger to acquire everything in sight. Money, power, sex and pleasure are supposed to fill up the lack, but they never do. You can escape this whole package of illusion if you see yourself not as a shadow fighting to get to God but as in the light from the first moment.”

If I begin the recognize in a more complete way that I am, right now, in the light of Jesus; that God sees me in light of what Christ did: redeemed, forgiven, saved, holy, perfect, pure and new, the ego would begin to lose its grip. It would be washed away and carried out to sea by the enormous wave of satisfaction that comes rushing in- God’s very righteousness, flowing like the ocean’s tide. In my journal I wrote down a list of “not enoughs” that commonly plague my heart and steal my priorities:

Not enough style, good clothing
Not enough women, charm
Not enough eloquence, popularity
Not enough confidence, practical skill
Not enough money, stuff
Not enough friends, community
Not enough strength, conditioning
Not enough achievement, success
Not enough…Jesus?

Now we’re hitting on something. All those other lusts precede Christ simply because I’ve been thinking upside down; in terms of worldly power and accumulation and hierarchy, rather than in the counterintuitive but surpassing power of sacrifice and humility. “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” cries Paul in 1 Corinthians 1. Now it’s up to me to get my logic right-side-up again.

I like how G.K. Chesterton puts it: “This is what I call being born upside down. The skeptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again, he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small.”

In the Bible, the tree of life is referred to in Genesis and Revelation, and in Proverbs it is described like this: “[wisdom] is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed.” In paradise there was this tree in the middle of the garden. What does it represent? I believe it has to do with fullness of life; our desires for creativity, beauty, romance and knowledge being absolutely satisfied. Adam and Eve lost this; a fiery sword prevented them from ever approaching. A deep part of our condition is this sense of irretrievable loss- cosmic nostalgia. We’re longing for something we remember, yet never had; in all music and relationships and pursuits; something grasped at, but which fades away in reality.

As our ego drags us around our sprits become drained and crushed. What is our hope? Jesus became human and came down to clean up the mess. Spiritually, he was ground to dust- cut off from the Father- so that we could once again find that perfect fulfillment God intended for us; a place where we can rest in wholeness and bliss. This is my hope and, in the end, the only sure foundation we can put our trust in- a sun and a shield all at once, protecting and guiding us on the path of life.

“All ye that pass by- behold and see
Man stole the fruit, now I must climb the tree
A tree of life for all, but only me.”
-George Herbert, The Sacrifice