an elephant has fallen through the roof.

There are those people in the world – they seem to make up the vast majority, if you ask me – who, when something significant or out-of-the-ordinary happens, ask

“what do we do about it?”

“how did this come to be?”

and other logical, pertinent, practical type questions that are expected of humans who are busy developing, understanding and moving forward.

But, living among these logical, practical, expected humans are another breed entirely. Those that ask less-expected and (to them) more important questions, like

“what does it mean?”

“could it be?...”

"what if?..."

I am one of those people. I can’t help it -  it’s the way my brain wanders.

I’m reading The Magicians Elephant, in which, after an elephant crashes through the roof of an opera house and lands on a woman, the town of Baltese is alive with all sorts of expected questions like “what do we do with this elephant?” “whose fault is it?”

But there is one policeman who, as he walks home and watches the lamplighter bring the city into warm ambiance, wonders 

“where is the elephant’s real home?” 

“why did it come here? Does it have a mission?” 

“Could it be that he will bring his friends and soon a whole zoo will drop through the opera house ceiling?” 

His mind races and swirls and dips, diving through the imaginative possibilities of this elephant’s arrival.

I think there will be those people who scoff at my book because there is a great deal of it that deals with simple wonder. What if Jesus was like this? What if Heaven is like this?

To some people, these seem like silly questions because they have no answer and they do nothing to solve the more important issues at hand:

“what do we do about it?”

“how did this come to be?”

But, if you ask me, when it comes to things like Jesus, Eternity, Salvation and Grace, there are the things we know:

Jesus died so we wouldn’t have to.

Eternity can be spent with or without God.

Salvation is free and everlasting.

Grace is the best thing that has been extended to us and that we can extend to others.

An elephant has fallen through the roof.

And after these things, there are not many more solid facts to uncover. The majority of the people in the world will spend their days asking logical and practical questions about these simple, unalterable facts, filling up books and conference halls, never getting much closer to an answer than the generations before them.

But the poets among us, the wonderers, the dreamers and the children will ask:

“What will we look like in Heaven?”

“What was Jesus like when He was tired?”

“Are there whole other galaxies of people who worship God in completely different ways than we do?”

These questions don’t get us any more answers than the logical, practical questions of the vast majority do. But they point to a God who is more majestic, breathtaking, fascinating and beautiful than our logic and practicality can contain. They evoke a sense of wonder. 

And I’ve heard it said that there is no better worship than wonder.

So I think it will be ok if there is some scoffing. I think we need both types of people and both types of questions. 

caleb.

this excerpt (from chapter 15ish) is very special to me (for obvious reasons). i debated on whether or not i should share it but i finally decided to because i need help with a new chapter and was hoping this one could serve as a template. i'll explain more at the end. 


i cut out some parts that wouldn't have made sense out of the context of surrounding chapters, so just bear with the randoms analogies that seemingly have no reference. 


i incorporated a previous posting "moths. gag." into the book, so you'll recognize the first few lines...

.........In the same vein, I know there are a lot of people who think of Christians and want to gag. They’ve been traumatized by a series of bizarre and probably stupid encounters and now want nothing to do with anyone who calls themself a Christian. They come up with complicated maneuvers to avoid these people. But what if they met JUST ONE Christian or had ONE ENCOUNTER that didn't make them want to run in the other direction? That would be their Gandalf Moth. Maybe it’s a someone, maybe it’s a feeling…maybe its JESUS.

So instead of running from my Damascus Road and my consciousness, instead of giving in to the perplexity, frustration and seeming impossibility of trying to find Christ among the Christianity, I search for the exception. Something that defies my urge to abandon, something that pulls me back to fight for what’s important. Something to hold on to.

For me, it’s Caleb.

When I feel like running, Caleb is what brings me back. Caleb makes me fight. Caleb’s story makes me believe in church and makes me want to keep burrowing until I find more and more pieces of Christ.

.......

Sometimes I think I catch glimpses of Him, in moments of beauty, stillness and awe. Sometimes it’s the really terrible things that call Him to visit.

The most beautiful and the most awful thing happened at my church. Baby Caleb died – that’s the awful part. He was the first baby born into our tiny congregation for as long as I could remember. We all loved him and secretly pretended he belonged to our family and sat in our row of chairs. He was a laughing baby and had big brown eyes and ringlets. When he died, nobody knew what to do. It was like our small church and our small town were paralyzed. Nobody expects babies to die and when they do, there’s not really a protocol in place. My mom was there minutes after they found him and she said even the firemen were frozen.

The beautiful part happened after all of the awful stuff- the tiny casket and trying so hard not to look at his mom, shaking and shaking. The first Sunday after the awful parts, Caleb’s mom called my mom to say they were going to skip church – they couldn’t bear to be in the place where Caleb would be so obviously absent. They were going to stay home and try to pray. Pastor Jim stood behind the pulpit and couldn’t even speak – the empty row in the back glowed in the corners of everyone’s minds. Finally, he choked out what every person was thinking- “what are we doing here?” Everyone got back in their cars and caravanned to the house where the awful things happened. Cars bumpered up the street and filled the front lawn. Crowded into in the living room, everyone shared hymnals and Bibles and God’s family worshipped Him in the house where He took Baby Caleb home, making sure everyone had someone to lean on.

In something as beautiful and as awful as Baby Caleb’s story I sway with a jolt of understanding and then spend the rest of the week scrambling to hold on to it before my eyes cloud over again with theology, culture, false prophecy and my own humanity. For the most whispering of a second, thousands of years seem to fall away and I see what God was doing. I understand Church. I believe in Church. Then the hair starts to grow back and I lose sight of that beautiful bald naked plan we are all chasing after.

so my question to you, average-of-18-hits-a-day-on-this-blog, is:

what is your Caleb?

we all know that the church is messed up - it's inevitable. we're only human. but when you feel like throwing up your hands, what makes you stay and fight? what makes you believe that this is all worthwhile? what reminds you that under all of these shenanigans, there is a God of truth and peace and purpose? 

i'd love to hear your stories. i'm hoping that the chapter after caleb's can include similar reminders and i only have so many storytelling friends :)

-and to clarify, i'm talking about CHURCH stories. i have no doubt God does amazing things in your life. He's not the problem - we are. (no offense, humans everywhere.)  

comment or email me at majecla317@gmail.com

new feature.

also i just figured out how to do this thing where blogger will send automatic email to people when i update. if you want to be on this list, just let me know (i guess you can leave a comment or email me your email address at majecla317@gmail.com)

audio adrenaline.

i'll keep this short since i know all of our ears are a little flooded with haiti information lately.

...also i have no idea how many people actually read my blog thus how effective this will be.

all the devastation in haiti has me reeling and i'm flooded with the helplessness i discussed in the ashton kutcher post. i saw footage of all the dead bodies on the tv screen above as i was getting a root canal...no such thing as novacaine for the heart.

as i'm barraged with heartbreaking statistics, videos, pleas for help, my first response is GIVE. but then there's all of the ridiculous arguing over which organization is "better" to give to. people say the red cross only gives 33 cents to the dollar and bill clintons organization isnt much better. i dont much care about the percentage as long as these people are getting help.

my point: i just found out that the lead singer of audio adrenaline has had a nonprofit in Haiti for some years now and was there when the earthquake hit. you can donate to his organization on the "hands and feet" website...he's been blogging since the destruction hit and it's cool to hear exactly how they are helping people and how the money is being used.

come on, audio adrenaline was the best!

heaven revised.

i've been working on the heaven chapter some more this week. still working tonight and tomorrow but here's what i've got so far. feedback? what did you used to think heaven would be like? what do you think now? 

I’m often afraid of Heaven. If I think too long on it, I feel a shivery nausea run through me before my thoughts skip somewhere safer. The sheer, unfathomable Otherness of such a place or existence always overwhelms me. I think it’s the same with most people. I think that’s why books like The Lovely Bones are such a hit: they make our fear manageable. One of my earliest and most revisited memories is of my mom calming my fears about Heaven. She found me hysterically sobbing into Carebear in the dark of my canopy bed. When I admitted that the source of my panic was the thought of spending “a forever” in Heaven, she laughed (the nerve!), but then got very serious.

“What’s the hardest thing you’re learning in school right now?” She asked.

Sensing a diversion and feeling one hundred percent above her child-psychology tactics, I answered hesitantly

“…long division?”

“Now imagine an ant trying to do your long division homework…do you think that’s possible?”

I remember cracking up, thinking that was just about the funniest thing I could picture,

its little antennae twitching and fizzling as it struggled to compute. Haha! Stupid little

ant.

 “No! Their brains are way too small!”

And then she told me that’s what it’s like when we try to understand something like Heaven. She said our human brains are too small to handle something so God-sized.

“You don’t have to be afraid of something just because you can’t understand it. The trick is learning to trust that God does.”

But that’s such a challenge from the very beginning. We have so many weird images of heaven fed to us – no wonder most of us are terrified. One of my least favorite childhood movies, All Dogs Go to Heaven shows it as this weird, cloudy void with a phone that can receive red-hot calls from Hell.  And the dogs bounced from cloud to cloud as they sang their chirpy cartoon songs and I clenched my teeth thinking Don’t fall through! FOR PETE’S SAKE STEP MORE CAREFULLY! Because one wrong move and you could straight up FALL OUT OF HEAVEN. I remember having nightmares about that voice in the locket – you can never come baaaaaaack. You can never come baaaaaaack. What a horrible, horrible movie.

There’s the Philadelphia Cream Cheese indulgence view of heaven where we all lie on clouds half naked and eat piles of cheesecake or onion rings or baby carrots – whatever makes you happy. Because, to most American minds, in a place of no tears there must be partial nudity and plates upon plates of food.

And I was (ok, still am) a big-time fan of the Phillie Cream Cheese view.

When I was younger I had a borderline frightening obsession with chicken wings – I would eat them day and night if I could, tearing through them like a savage feral child, just stumbled in from my woodland home. My parents say that the only reason us kids any self-control whatsoever is because of their mini temperance act: if things got out of hand, like if I got that look in my eye where they knew I was seeing everyone as a giant, talking chicken wing or when I would wake up early to try and eat the leftovers for breakfast, they put us on prohibition: I wasn’t allowed to have chicken wings and for similar reasons my little brother Ryan (who was a fatty little kid) wasn’t allowed to have candy.  It was torture and I remember comforting myself with the thought: well when I get to Heaven, I get to have all the chicken wings I want. And I pictured me and Jesus sitting Indian-style at a sturdy, primary colored Little Tykes table, leaning back on our cloud chairs and sharing an enormous platter of chicken wings. And the platter would magically refill itself every time it started to get low and Jesus and I would throw our greasy faces back and laugh, laugh, laugh. Ryan of course, would be there too in an overstuffed armchair, his chubby ankles sticking straight out off the edge. He would have a similarly magical cut-glass punch bowl in his lap, filled to the brim with Blow Pops and Razzles and Pixie Sticks and Hubba Bubba. (And there would be no licorice present because I was fairly certain that Lord Licorice From Candyland was the devil and there was no way he was sneaking up into my heaven through his tasty consumer products.) We would eat and eat to our hearts content, therefore fulfilling St. John’s prophecy that in heaven there would be no tears, no suffering etc etc.  And the glorious songs we sang would blend into an everlasting jingle for our favorite snacks, in order to show God how grateful we were for the endless food. I love these fishes cuz they’re soooo delicious! Gone goldfishing!!! Thanks for that blue box, Kraft macaroni and cheese – we got the blues!!!

And then, probably sensing that they were feeding the chicken and candy obsession rather than squelching it, my parents kind of snatched that snacky version of heaven away and start to teach us a more serious faith. No, you won’t be eating Smartfood all day, because you’ll be too busy praising God. And I pictured us all floating around in choir robes, our hands folded Von Trapp style, high on our chests. And there are so many versions of this boring Heaven from TV shows, movies, even children’s books to feed my imaginings. You know - people just kind of hovercrafting around, admiring the beauty, being pious, talking in library tones. Like my grandmother’s retirement megavillage in Florida. All landscaped and perfect and quiet and cookie-cuttered. There’s a pool but no splashing, bikes but no racing, shopping – but from stores like Chicos, Naturalizer and GNC. Let’s be honest – it sounds more like a punishment than an eternal reward.

To add to this, my parents started to read us the baffling descriptions of Heaven from Revelation. Then, in what used to be more of an echo-ey endless fog-filled buffet, some architecture slid into place. Now Heaven had streets of gold, mansions with countless rooms, seas of crystal, jewels everywhere and freakish multi-limbed (but friendly) talking creatures. It was like The White House, Emerald City and Narnia all rolled into one.  I was torn between glee and terror. Because you see, places like that - that are terribly large and beautiful are generally very cold and lonely places. I would have much rather heard that Heaven was like a snuggy cabin from a Thomas Kinkade painting. And we would all gather around that magical fire and sing twangy bluegrass songs. A plain but homey Heaven was much more appealing to my small-town mind than a dazzling, colossal palace filled with sunshine and stainless steel.

Even as I’ve grown up and seen more of the world, I can’t say much has changed. I feel closest to God in small, warm settings – at candlelit Christmas Eve services, canoeing on the river, reading the Bible in a coffee shop, snuggled up by the woodstove.  When I go to conferences, when I tip my head back in the St. Paul’s Cathedral, when I shrink down beneath a curtain of stars, it feels like there’s too much space. Like He’s dissolving.

Maybe I’m trying to fit Him into my little ant brain…or maybe my little ant brain is trying to tell me something - like that perfect communion with a God who is Love is less like visiting the Wizard of Oz and more like snuggling up by the fireplace. Like that when we’re all “up there”, chicken wings and all – it won’t feel alien, vacant or cold. It will feel a little bit like coming home.

(And ya, ya, ya I get it that we will also be filled with awe and wonder and fall on our faces to worship, etc. But I don’t think it will be a trembly, fearful worship like so many pastoral type people describe. I think it will be more like the first time you see Mickey Mouse. You hide behind your mom’s leg at first because he’s freaking huge and you weren’t expecting such enthusiastic grandeur…but then you start to grin because you think I knew it! I knew you were real and I have believed in you for so very, very long and you’re FINALLY finally here!  And he reaches out his arms to you and your smile nearly cracks your face in two because he wants to hug you. He wants to hug you of all people. )

revisions.

i've been revising chapter 1 (mr. rogers shenanigans - from may 26th) and thought i'd share the new and improved version.

For the most part, I hated Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I hated that he changed his shoes when he got home (why not just take them off?), I hated the way he spoke his songs instead of actually singing them, and I especially hated that stupid cat in the Land of Make Believe who only spoke in meows but somehow everyone understood her and liked her. But I watched that show all the time. I sat there through the shoe removal, and the song-speaking and the echolaliac cat, waiting for one thing: the Picture Picture Factory Tours. I sat raptured by the process of wax dying and paper wrapping required to make crayons, fascinated by the many different molds used to cut pasta shapes, intrigued that toothpaste tubes are filled from the bottom and then sewn shut. (Who knew!?) For a while, after I had to grow up and stop watching Mr. Rogers, I really missed those tours. You can imagine my delight when I came across How It’s Made on Discovery Channel. Now I know how guitars, hot tubs, snowboards, gummy worms and rocking chairs are made- and I don’t have to deal with Mr. Rogers’ shenanigans.


To make my point, I am a person who loves to know the origin of things, especially if it involves a process of sorts. For this same reason I love cooking, children’s museums, arts and crafts and history. I love when makeover shows don’t just show the before and after, but the in between stages. I like to take things apart. I like to know how things work. I think this is why I chose to study Sociology. It’s like a Picture Picture tour of people and the things they do. Sociology teaches critical examination of everything. It teaches you to take everything apart, understand how something came to be, determine what is truly useful and discard parts that are flawed or unnecessary for its health and development. In some, this practice breeds a pervasive cynicism- deconstruction of a person or society most always uncovers injustice- but if nurtured correctly it can develop a healthy and avid longing for truth.


Like a surgeon, I spent my days as a Sociology student dissecting. Urban society, suburban life, gender roles, family dynamics, educational systems – I took them all apart. I cut away layers of motive, upbringing, history and culture to find truth and value. The more I learned, the more often I turned my scalpel inward. I took apart my childhood (did being a ballerina put pressure on me to be thin?) ,my womanhood (do I feel like I have to be independent because my mom is a housewife?), my class (what is middle class?), and my ethnicity. I dismantled, learned my origins, reviewed the process of the making of me. Like a desperate gold miner, sifting through so much muck in search of the occasional nugget, I have been trained to efficiently strip away the false. But in every facet of my self, my process, I continue to find this thing called Christianity that I just can’t cut through. It goes back almost as far as I can remember. It trickles down to every particle of my existence. It is in my thoughts, my actions, my motivation and my ambitions. It affects the way I treat people and the way I treat myself. It makes me feel guilty and it brings me joy. My self is Christian self. My process is a Christian process. But with all of my sociological training, I can’t really figure out why.


In any other setting, in another person or society, I would dissect this Christianity and find out whether it was something that was positively or negatively permeating that social organism. But I can’t. I grew up in this Christianity – the Sunday school, VBS, Veggie Tales and McGee and me. I went to Christian school and youth group and Christian college. I married a Christian guy from a Christian family. Christianity is the back of my hand. I see it everyday, but let’s be honest – I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried.


My friend Julia calls it the “fishbowl syndrome”. She grew up a pastor’s kid and says that for someone raised in the Christian culture, trying to examine your faith objectively is like asking a fish to describe water. It can tell you that water surrounds it, that water fills it’s lungs-but ask it the quality of water, how it moves, how it sits in the bowl. It is impossible. The fish would need to take a mighty leap out of the bowl, lake or ocean and sit outside to examine the water. That is what it feels like to me to try and look at Christianity with my sociological mind. I cannot take it apart and examine it because I cannot even see it.


So I did what any scholar would do: I turned to my books. And like a sociologist, I didn’t seek out the textbook, I found memoirs because people teach better than statistics do. I sat


on the floor in the Inspirational section of Barnes and Noble with a stack. Lamott, Miller, Lewis…But it’s frustrating and dead-ending because these people aren’t like me. They’ve come to know God late in life. They’ve abandoned the church and then been drawn back in. They’ve fought with God and lost.


They’ve been outside the fishbowl.


But what about those of us who have always been inside?


In the church, we act like the worst place to be is outside of Christianity. But I feel jealous of these people who have been outside. People like my mom. She grew up Catholic, disenchanted by a church who taught her that God is angry and wants to catch her doing something wrong so He can rub his hands together and zap punishment into her life. When I was five, my dad started going to church with my Uncle Ralph. Uncle Ralph would come over after us kids went to bed and answer all of my dad’s questions. My mom would read her book and pretend not to listen, but couldn’t help overhearing about this God of love and patience who time and time again redeems His people. She says it was so beautifully different from the God she had pictured that she thought “I want that God”. I hear stories like this about people being drawn to God’s beauty and the grace of the Gospel. Looking in and thinking “I need that”. It makes me so fiercely wistful. I want to know that feeling. I want God to be something new and beautiful that I discover and choose, not just the water around me, not just a reflex. At times it feels like I can’t stop being a Christian any more than I could stop being Asian or stop having a northern accent or stop my feet from turning in. (and yes, I understand that Christianity is a heart change, not just a way of life)


I just read a book about a woman who heard someone speaking Italian and thought that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She decided that she had to learn to speak those lovely words. Like my mom, drawn by beauty she overheard, she knew it was something she needed in her life. In comparison I feel like I am the homegrown Italian who grew up speaking my native language, hearing it all of the time- both to bless and curse others. I love the language, believe it is what I need to communicate, but to me it is not beautiful, it is functional. I don’t hear the inflections and pronunciations that made that author’s heart flutter.

To me it is just life - just the water that fills my lungs.

my ant brain.

this is a chunk from an evolving chapter in the second half of the book. (for the newbies, other excerpts are in the earliest postings).and for the record, i'm not a fan of "hysterically hiccuping" either...but that's why i said it's an evolving chapter.  

i’m often afraid of heaven. if i think too long on it, i feel a shivery nausea run through me before my thoughts skip somewhere safer. the sheer unfathomable otherness of such a place or existence always overwhelms me.

one of my earliest and most revisisted memories is of my mom calming these fears. she found me hysterically hiccupping into my carebear in the dark of my canopy bed. when I admitted that the source of my panic was the thought of spending “a forever” in heaven, she laughed (the nerve!), but then got very serious.

“what’s the hardest thing you’re learning in school right now?” she asked. sensing a diversion and feeling wholly above such tactics, i answered hesitantly

“…long division?”

“now imagine an ant trying to do your long division homework…do you think that’s possible?”

i remember cracking up, thinking that was just about the funniest thing i could picture, his tiny antennae  twitching and sizzling as he struggled to  compute. stupid little ant.

 “no! their brains are way too small!”

“exactly. that’s what it’s like when we try to understand something like heaven. our human brains are too small to handle something so God-sized. You don’t have to be afraid of something just because you can’t understand it. the trick is learning to trust that God does.”

she asked me if the two of us could just keep sitting there on my bed and talking, would that be scary, even if there was no end in sight? no, that didn’t feel overwhelming at all.
 

i come back to that memory all the time to reassure myself that there’s a difference between fearing something and not understanding it. this is a distinction I tend to forget time and time again.

and really, would i want to worship a God who fit perfectly inside of my tiny little ant brain?