From April-August, I took my finals, graduated from Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a Masters in Public Policy, visited my sister and vacationed in Cambodia and Thailand, moved from MA to MD, landed a job with state government, vacationed again in SC, and then finally began to settle in. The settling-in part started two weeks ago. But alas! I’ve found myself back to writing, as I should–because I love to.
I am supposed to be here
Forced into silence
An introspective journey to find
I am
The mind
Questioning, productive wonder
God, God
Is submission worthy of practice
Why call the intellect evil
Moore knew
Aquinas practiced
Grappling with this thing, theology
Not scientolgy or unitarian history
Embracing atheists, agnostics
There–the space more important than the question
The answer
Lies beneath, beyond, between
Today I am realizing that there is no way I can fulfill my call. I used to think that my call was solely about positional leadership in the political realm. Sure, I am called to politics and I am called to be a different kind of politician. However, that is not the propelling, overarching call.
I recount January 2007. On January 14, 2007, Lola died. She was the last of my surviving grandparents, and even though she was already 96 and it was her time, I believed that I had more time to spend with her. She was invincible. However, on January 11, while vacationing in South Carolina, I received a phone call from mom. Lola was going in for surgery. The doctors were hopeful that she would pull through despite her pleadings against the surgery. On the 12th, while in recovery, her vitals were not consistent. Immediately, in the morning, my cousin, friend, and I rushed back, arriving to Maryland in 6 hours to be with Lola. I drove directly to the hospital. When I entered, my heart sank; our Esperanza, our Hope, was frail, breathing heavily through the support of the oxygen machine. At the moment when we walked in, she began to whimper—as if she was sorry that we had to see her that way. I slept at the hospital with my aunt and cousin, taking over for those who were there the night before. In between naps throughout the night, we would pray aloud, talk to her, and sing. Every moment was fragile and marked by the deafening beeping of the oxygen machine.
The next day, my sister Christina and I facilitated a discussion surrounding life support. We gathered all Lola’s children and grandchildren present and listened to everyone’s thoughts. It was evident that everyone wanted Lola to be in the least amount of pain. Also, Lola herself believed that when it was her time, that the Lord would take her.
That evening, all the female grandchildren slept in the hospital. Again, we alternated leading prayers and songs. At 2 am, we all fell asleep. I was crouched in a ball, lying across two chairs next to Lola’s bed. As I was dozing off, I turned my back away from Lola because I could not bear to face the reality that she was dying. I was saddened as sleep overcame me.
I had the most vivid dream. In my dream, Lola was sitting upright in her hospital bed, as strong as can be. I was facing her at the edge of her bed, but would not go near her because I was scared. Isn’t she dying? How is it that she is sitting upright? She sensed my confusion and said to me, “Why are you scared? Come here.” I hesitated, but approached her. She gathered me in her arms and said, “Angela, If I love you this much, imagine how much God loves you. In your life, your call is to love like God loves.” I had a tremendous excitement and peace as I hugged her back. I said nothing, but was content right where I was: happy in her arms. However, somehow I remembered she was really dying. I was grieved because I felt like I finally go to know Lola personally and she had to go. My cousin Jet woke me up because I was physically crying in my sleep. I opened my watery eyes and turned my back now towards Lola. There she was—now off the oxygen machine and time shortening. I ran out of the hospital room because I did not want Lola to hear me weeping.
Yesterday, as I struggled with all my schoolwork and the stress of finding the perfect job, I cried out to God, “Lord, help me! What is this all about?” God prompted my heart to write this blog because He knew that as I processed this I would come to the conclusion that He wants me to realize in the midst of challenge: There is no way I can fulfill my call. The truth is: He must fulfill my call. I can never love exactly as God does. It is impossible. However, I will still be called to that standard until the that he fulfills His perfect plan—which is when I join with Lola in the promise of eternity. For now, I can be compelled towards Love and still obey my call until the day of Christ. By myself, I am nothing and can do nothing, but empowered through Christ, I can love extravagantly. As my mentor Raycenia told me today, it is time for this world to rest in knowing that God loves us. He ministers His love to us and we minister that back to others. Perfect love casts out fear; God is perfect love. Therefore, the more I rely on Him, He will overcome the perils about me.
Today, I remember Lola fondly and cherish the lifelong lesson that God gave me through her. I choose to receive Jesus’ love and accept myself where I am. I can embrace the fact that it is not about me fulfilling anything. It is about Him being an all-powerful, all-knowing God, Love. It is about Jesus loving me and allowing me to simply give from the abundance of what He gave me first.
Have a wonderful week of True Love.
I attribute my lifelong desire to live out my days of radical, devoted service to the unmerited favor of God upon me. Simply put: I have responded to the tugging, the aching, the burden that has welled within my soul since I was a child. There have been desperate times that I have run from this “call,” and there have been many an awful attempt to turn my back and call it quits. Recklessly, I have distorted morality and have outright abandoned any notion of absolute truth. However, out of the denying and hiding, the faint ember of faith has compelled me back to take ownership of that very call.
What compelled me to politics? My politics were shaped by Jim Wallis’, God’s Politics, and by my missionary experiences in Ethiopia. I have come to embrace that social issues are moral issues. As Wallis emphasizes, “There is no spiritual transformation without a personal God, and no power that can really change our lives beyond mere self-improvement” (34). Therefore, it was God that inspired my vision in the first place, and it was God that I relied on to believe in what seems impossible. I know that to truly see transformation, it is vital that we prostrate ourselves into the position of absolute keenness to God’s immutable will.
This country needs a different kind of politician—one who is not afraid to have the knowledge of and faith in a public God. This does not mean that the outspoken intellect who can speak a sermon on demand is automatically “God’s candidate.” It does mean, however, that a person thrust into politics has permission to hold on to God’s love so as to never attempt to separate policy from person. Further, a person who understands Jesus’ willing availability is a step closer to understanding that God is God and that he/she is not. A public God is one who cares for all—including the privileged and disadvantaged, poor and the rich, and the outcasts and the in-crowds. God, who has already seen the inevitable and worked out the unimaginable, might just have a plan that aims to include rather than exclude, honor instead of devalue, and provide instead of abandon.
I cannot scrutinize our politicians without evaluating myself first. I do not dare to make conclusive remarks of candidates’ capacities based on their rhetoric. What I will do is pray that each candidate learn to distinguish a push from God from a change in political winds. As i pray, I will continue to own my moral outrage and dare to speak with humility on behalf of the unheard. I hope I will be one among many aspiring and seasoned politicians who will operate as the second-in-command and remember that the worlds’ needs supercede any nonsense that comes from the ego.
There are natural laws of physics that exist. These laws are not dependent on my belief or unbelief in these laws. If I drop a pen to the ground, it will fall. Admittedly, I find it much easier to believe in gravity since I know and feel the dynamic of gravity every day. People and circumstances validate my experiences and this makes it much easier for me to ascribe to the commonly accepted fact
Operating on a spiritual plane is much more difficult. Is there truly an existence of the supernatural? Is it dependent on belief? If I have seen the fruit of the divine with my own eyes, could it be possible that my mind was playing a trick on me? Could it be possible that my mind would operate in such a fashion as to invent a startling, convincing hallucination that would defy my own conceptions of reality on earth? If I have seen the manifestation of the supernatural in others, on whose belief was the truth of the manifestation dependent?
These are the thoughts that I have at 1:22pm during my break from class.
Idolatry. Idolatry is what happens when anything or anyone is revered to the point that it takes the place of Jesus Christ, my Lord God. That is the premise. The question that I must grapple with before I move on with 2008 is an important one: can Love become an idol? I say no.
God is Love and God exists for the sole purpose of being I am. Therefore, the best possible thing I could do is to revere God. If I give God everything within my very being, then I am giving Him what He gave me first.
If God is the most OMNI (-present, -potent, -scient, etc.) pinnacle of good and there exists nothing or no one more magnificent, then God exists also to revere Himself and to continue to amplify Himself. If I continue to focus on an unabashed Love, then Love can never become an idol; enlarging Love can never be done in excess since Love in itself is limitless.
Jesus Christ is God and God is Love. For a practical application, as I am in Love more, I am more and more in alignment with God. The tricky aspect to all this is that as I am in Love, I see the face of God; this Love is within us. It is not that Love is culprit for idolatry at the point of recognition of Love in others.
However, when we assign Love to Other, than we are already diverting our attention away from I am. Love is not the idol if we remain in the heart of God. When Love becomes, Love is no longer I am. Love is then warped to (little “l”) love, the verb, object, and adjective. This derivative–our own formulaic conception–becomes that which is no longer Love who remains. The derivative is what can become an idol–but again, true Love cannot.
Like all perversions, we are to blame for distorting what is pure. We are to blame for our own attributions. As for me, I have to remember this so that my intentions are always to expand Love, cherish the overflow of Love, and never believe that I am supposed to be a selfish consumer of the diluted, little love.
In the opening chapter of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he explains the manner in which oppressors interact with the oppressed in society. Freire expounds on how oppressors manifest power and also how the oppressed grapple with their own sense of power. Freire describes this dynamic in the context of his explicit intention to eradicate the imprisoned minds of the illiterate by advocating a paradigm shift; he believed that an individual could realize his/her “social reality” and then participate in his/her own critical advancement within that society. He states:
“This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong enough to free both. Any attempt to ‘soften’ the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity,” the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity,” which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source.” (26).
Though Freire’s work as a whole is from that of a radical social perspective, there are timeless truths contained within his work that can be beneficial in understanding oppression in terms of spiritual depletion. In the aforementioned statement, there are incredible parallels that can be drawn when thinking of oppressors as the demonic and the oppressed as fragile, fallen, humans.
The struggle of power between oppressors and the oppressed is a constant battle in a Christian’s life. A Christian must contend on a daily basis because of the tensions that have been wrought upon him/her since the Fall. However, the very tension that pulls will only give way to destruction or sin when we lose the desire to stand firm, or when we resign altogether. Freire states that the mission of the oppressed is to free themselves and the oppressors. Instead of giving way to sin, one must participate in liberation by letting go of tension. This is different from resigning. Resignation infers a spiritual and mental defeat: believing that sin/death has won. Letting go, on the other hand, indicates a conscious maturity: refusing to buy into the mentality that the tension has any power in the first place.
In turn, as Freire states, the oppressors are deemed powerless, while the oppressed find power in weakness. Again, there is a remarkable congruence between this dynamic that Freire describes with the dynamic of spiritual warfare. Since Satan is a creation of the Creator, and because his only power comes from himself, neither Satan nor his tactics could ever free himself from his own demise. Satan and all contained within the demonic realm could never attain the power to liberate. Satan also has no greater authority than that which God allows. Likewise, also as creations, humans by themselves, cannot free themselves totally from sin or from the wretched pain that comes with sin. By him/herself, an individual only has human nature, which is prone to the tension of oppression.
Freire further asserts that the oppressors mask a lessening of power through a type of “false generosity”. When the oppressor wants to appear fair or to the benefit of the oppressed, power is supposedly “softened”. However, the truth of the matter is that oppression continues and manifests in a disrupted social order. This false generosity can be likened to the tactics of Satan. The enemy is never a life-giver. Much like Freire’s claim that social disruption “is nourished by death, despair, and poverty,” the enemy’s purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). When an individual falls prey to the enemy’s tactics, defeat soon arrives. Again, Satan is not a creator; therefore, he can only whisper the same old lies, lure one into typical destructive behaviors, and seduce a person with an insatiable appetite for that which could never satisfy. Thus, when the enemy is threatened by the hope and will of the oppressed, he launches deceptive, subtle, and certainly cunning tactics, which are in fact a supposedly charitable sense of security.
Gratefully, I have come to a place of revelation. There is one way to truly attain liberation from sin: the strategy is to be weak. We are to delight in the finished story: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.” The Holy Spirit dwells within each saved Christian, thereby lending him/herself to be weak to the point of death, and yet not responsible for being the Savior. Thus, it is the power of grace that becomes sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). The daily grace that God gives me is shocking. As R.P.C Hanson put it, “Grace means the free, unmerited, unexpected love of God, and all the benefits, delights, and comforts, which flow from it.” Though entirely undeserving, I prostrate myself to receive, and it is my prayer that all may also have a riveting, radical, and convincing encounter with His grace.
Welcome to my blog!
I decided to have a central place for thoughts, articles, poetry, and general musings. Enjoy!
