It's been snowing here the past few days. It came in on Thursday and has been off and on ever since. I love it when it snows. But mostly I love it when it's snowing. Firstly, those flakes are incredible; each and everyone beautiful and unique. It amazes me that water going up and down while freezing thousands of feet in the air can produce something so complex and beautiful!
I noticed again their complex beauty a few weeks ago when it snowed a little, then when I arrived at work that day there were snowflake decorations on the doors, each and everyone the exact same as those around it. I laughed, yet I also was sad. Creativity and efficiency are ways of being and doing that will always be at war. If you want efficiency, you must give up creativity, and vise versa. As I think about that, part of me wonders if we've forgotten something as Christians. When I think about God and how he interacts with us, efficiency doesn't exist for him. It's all creative how he lives with and loves us. And that's weird to me because that's not how I live my life at all. Yet it also makes sense because God doesn't worry about time. The only reason efficiency is ever needed is if there is a point at which the doing, or being, will not be able to happen any more. Things must go efficiently so we can get a lot done before we can't anymore. Before we stop...before time ends...before we die.
As I think about it, the main reason we wonder what time it is directly relates to our view of death. The simple action of looking at the clock, or checking the time on our cell phone reveals our beliefs about death. Not that time, calenders, watches, and alarm clocks are bad, yet I feel like to those of us who claim Christ has defeated death, they should be irrelevant.
There's a sign in the backroom of where I work (actually it's all over the backroom) that says, "Speed is life". The first time I saw that, and up until the present, it disturbs me deeply. I don't think people realize what they're saying when they write that. I get they want us to work hard, but "Speed is life"?! I think that is a reflection of our society (because at my job "The customer is #1!" so apparently the customer thinks "speed is life" too.) and I think a lot of Christians are, unfortunately, leading the parade. I see it in our congregations, our worship services, our acts of worship themselves, or planning meetings, the mind-sets of our spiritual shepherds and leaders.
I don't think we understand what Jesus did to death, and I think it affects the ways we live and love.
Death used to be the end. It was the consequence we created by making eternal choices with finite wisdom. We were on a road trip and we ran the car into a building. The trip is over. We're going nowhere.
What Jesus did to death is he killed it!
Death is dead!
It still exists, just like a dead body exists and exerts force on the ground to which it has fallen, but it has no power anymore. No essence, no being. And the more and more it decays, the less and less it exerts force. Now death is a flat tire. We must experience it, we must go through it, but the car continues and the road trip does not end.
Car wreck vs. flat tire.
Death then vs. death now.
So if the end is not the end, even though everyone acts like it is, that means time, in more ways than we'll admit, is irrelevant. Yes, when we die we "leave" this realm, but God doesn't. So his work will continue long after we're gone. So why are we trying to be so efficient with our Christian lives? It's not about us! God is not efficient, even though he works and acts inside our "timed" realm, and neither should we. We must be creative in everything at all times. That is the way of the Kingdom.
But that's actually not what I was wanting to write about. Ha ha :)
Snow. I love it when it's snowing. The flakes seem to suck up all the sound. It's so still, so quiet. The silence is so incredibly wide and deep! It absorbs and covers everything more and more with each inch. Yet, even tonight as I took a walk, over the crunching of my shoes in the snow, in the distance I could still hear cars on the roads.
I feel like the snow has come to put all things to rest, like a mother tucking in her child for bed. But we, unlike the rest of creation, are the child that doesn't want to sleep. We want to play with our toys (jobs, groceries, obligations, fantasies) and don't give a damn that mommy is looking out for us and knows we need our rest. I love it in The Shack when Peterson talks about how the snow forces everyone to stop and breathe. It sounds so incredibly serene and peaceful! But where I'm at, the snow doesn't stop us, it just slows us down and makes us frustrated. I felt it the other day going to work. And if I'm honest I hate that that is true about me. I so want to be a man of peace who is content in every situation. But it's so easy for me to get caught up in the hurry of our societies' religious devotion to economy and efficiency that I don't ever think about it most of the time.
-I just looked out the window and the wind was making the falling snow dance.-
I am beginning to love dancing more than I ever have. It used to be weird, uncomfortable, and foreign to me, but I'm beginning to see the ways in which the body of a skilled dancer convey the music. Sometimes if I am feeling oppressed by demands of efficiency at work, in order to fight it, I'll skip instead of walk. It makes me feel like a kid again and free from all these "adult, real world" responsibilities which are actually just seeds of our delusion.
It's weird that all this came out when all I was wanting to do was write about how I love snow and how much I enjoyed my walk in it this evening. Again, it's amazing to me how so much can come from so little.
If you make a snowflake my judge, I'll be guilty every time!
One Love. One World.
