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This may be a shock, but I’m thinking God doesn’t really speak English. I mean, of course, he can speak English, as presumably he can speak anything he wants, but what I’m saying is that I don’t really think English is his native language.
Furthermore, when God speaks, I think he speaks in his native language, then we translate to English or whatever other language it is we speak. In doing so, of course, some things get lost in the translation. Of course, it’s possible that things get added in the translation, too, but adding things to God’s language would probably result in what should be called a loss.
Really, it seems it would be be impossible to add anything to something that God could say in his language and actually improve on what he says. So, let’s consider anything that’s added, or subtracted, from what God says, during the translation effort, as being a loss.
Then, of course, after the translation, we like to take it a few steps further and explain the translation. Translation: we dumb it down for mass consumption. More gets lost, and more becomes less.
So, acknowledging a prevailing tone of cynicism in the way this post is developing but pressing on unabashedly, what I’m saying is that pretty much everything we recognize as our world – the methods, the cultures, the styles, the morality, the worship, the books, the arts, the counsel, the teaching, the advice – are a diminished translation of what God said; a dumbed down version of what God spoke into existence.
I agree, the idea that we’ve screwed up what God intended, isn’t an original thought. We all pretty well know that. But, weak as it may be, I’m actually trying to hit a slightly different point – frankly, that even though we know we’ve screwed it up, we still persist in perpetuating the problem, and mostly because it’s just too weird to actually let the native language of God say what it says.
Our predicament, I think, stems from the fact that we just can’t stop translating. Inherently, the translation weakens the voice, but we can’t help it. God’s native language may not be English or Italian or Spanish or Chinese or Swahili or whatever, but ours are. Aren’t they? Well? What is our native language? Are we just refusing to speak it, or at least acknowledge it?
What is God’s native language? That’s the question this line of thought begs as it rattles around my brain. A conversation with my daughter, Hannah, at the The Crown Pub tonight has given me what might be a clue, but I’ll save you the chase and get to the big finish.
I think the language God speaks can be heard in the groaning of the human soul. I know that’s too abstract to be very helpful, but keep in mind, this is English.
Tonight, I’m wondering if God’s native language is the one we hear when we want to do something radical, like go on a random, unreasonable, unjustified, unnecessary road trip. What God would be speaking would not be the road trip, but the desire that gets translated into a road trip.
Maybe it’s the inspiration that strikes just before a painting, or just before a sentence, or just before a prayer, or a conversation, or a spice gets added to the recipe. Maybe God’s voice is heard just before the thought strikes or the plan takes shape. Maybe it’s the preface of grief or anger, sorrow or disdain.
Maybe the translation is the action or emotion or idea, but the language of God is the precursor to any and all of those things.
They say, whoever they are, that you know you are becoming fluent in a new language when you no longer take the mental step to translate it into your original language and then back again.
I’m wishing I could hear God’s native language and communicate fluently enough so as not to engage in translation. Just to hear the groaning and let it speak, then respond in like manner and be satisfied.
That’s weird, huh?
“If the meaning of life is just a string of theological words, then who cares about it one way or another and what difference does it make and why bother to say the words at all, even if in some sense they are true? But if it is a reality, then words cannot contain it, you can know it only when you experience it, and if life in general has meaning, then every part of life also has meaning …” (The Hungering Dark – “The Monkey God”, Frederick Buechner)
I am thankful for the multitude who cried out to Pilate saying, “crucify him!”
That poor, deceived, oppressed, greedy, malicious, zealous, angry mob. Today, and every day, I’m thankful for them.
They were wrong about him – Oh! so wrong. But I need them. I need them to be there, yelling, shouting, manipulating, loathing, cursing. I need them to win. I need him to be crucified. I wish I didn’t, but I do.
I’m thankful for their greed and their zealous hearts, for their cowardice and their shame. I’m thankful they were hungry and desperate enough to sell their souls to the religious hierarchy of the day in order to line their pockets and fill their bellies and climb the ladder.
I’m thankful for Jesus who forgave them, and me, in the midst of enduring our selfishly-imposed, unjust sentence.
But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the multitudes to ask for Barabbas, and to put Jesus to death. – Matthew 27:20
Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus, who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let Him be crucified!” And he said, “Why, what evil has He done?” But they kept shouting all the more, saying, “Let Him be crucified!” – Matthew 27:22-23
But they were insistent, with loud voices asking that He be crucified. And their voices began to prevail. – Luke 23:23
And wishing to satisfy the multitude, Pilate released Barabbas for them, and after having Jesus scourged, he delivered Him to be crucified. – Mark 15:15
I’m thankful today, that because of that multitude – and that governor, and those soldiers, and those priests and elders, and the weakness of our humanity – that words cannot contain the meaning of life.
Because of them, life has meaning, known and unknown, and not just in general, but every part: the things that I consider good have meaning and those I disdain for their depravity, the major events and the tiniest gestures, the heights of ecstasy and the depths of despair, the sweet and the bitter, the great and small, the powerful and the weak, the brilliance and the breathing.
I’m thankful for redemption. And for you.
William Arthur Pratt
Will is my oldest son. On November 9th, he turned 13, and became our third teenager, and first boy teenager.
Honestly, I have struggled to find an angle from which to write this post. I have struggled with the ups and downs of attitudes and emotions that come from the days of life with a teenager. I have struggled to find happy thoughts and sweet somethings to say about Will, somethings that seem to come so easily for a cute and cuddly preschool-age kid.
Tonight, it’s late, I’m exhausted, I have an early wake-up call, and my relationship with Will is strained by recent days of difficulty, but I’ve decided I have to get this out of my system. I have to find a way to articulate the hidden somethings from my heart that aren’t covering the distance to my mind so easily.
I’ve realized that the real story about my feelings toward Will can mostly be found in the difficulty I have translating those feelings into words.
I’ve been shocked by the experience. I’ve been frustrated by the lack of an emotional fountain that can be evoked by simple thoughts of my oldest son. I’ve been worn out trying to find a handle on an old story that I could pull on to produce cute and meaningful anecdotes about my first boy and the joys and challenges of raising him.
Emotions, I have. Stories, I have. Love, I have. Words, not so much.
I remember how, on multiple occasions, when Will was little, I would express my love for him to Renee. I would say, “Oh, God, I love that boy! Oh, wow, I love him so much. I just love him!”
I would also pray almost daily for the strength and courage to be a father to Will without breaking him. I have been so frustrated by the ups and downs of my relationship with him, and so angry at him on so many occasions, and so hard in my discipline toward him, with such high hopes for who God intends for Will to be, that I have been afraid I would break the beauty of his unique character and turn him into some fearful, impotent, bland, conglomeration of my own weak images of what I’ve desired.
I’ve worried that I would hack and chop and squeeze the life out of him, like an over-anxious gardener pruning the vines so deep nothing can grow.
Will is very much like me in so many ways, and entirely unlike me in so many others. He is wonderfully artistic – much more than I am – and has easily learned to express himself through multiple art forms, including music. He is physically strong and coordinated, excelling on a skateboard, with a quick mental and physical grasp that I could not demonstrate at his age.
He loves books, as I do, and will routinely place a dozen on hold at the library, reading parts of several of them, but finishing few before losing interest or racking up overdue fines. He loves possessing books as much as reading them, just like I do.
He has a temper, thankfully less flammable than mine. He procrastinates, as I do, tending to be late and slow to move and slow to draw conclusions, as I am.
Will has some characteristics, though, which I’m sure I did not have at his age, and may not have yet. His heart leans toward righteousness; it is readily corrected when out of line, and constantly bows in pursuit of justice, service, and love. I am simply overwhelmed by the way he humbly accepts even my over-bearing wrath, at times. He is sincerely contrite.
We are learning this thing together, this father and son game. We are not skilled in these arts, yet, and we struggle, mutually, to find ground fit for walking along this route.
I am reassured, though, through this thirteenth year, at least, that Will has not been broken. The stuff God has put in him is tenacious and enduring, and has not yet succumbed to the weaknesses of this family or this world. It lingers in hope and longing for expression.
My hope, in addition to finding words to convey the depth of my love for him, is to find the strength to keep fighting, even against myself when necessary, to free him – to free the gifts that God has endowed upon him, setting them loose for the benefit of us all, without breaking him in the process.
Oh, God, I love that boy! Oh, wow, I love him so much!
Technical note from namesake: If you’re seeing this in email or any reader, to see the full text of this post, please click the title of the post, above. I changed this setting a couple of days ago and some folks have been wondering why my posts suddenly got thousands of words shorter (they were secretly overjoyed).
I’m experimenting with this format for distribution of the blog for two reasons: 1) posts are more legible due to the controlled format in the WordPress environment; 2) it leads to the blog site where you can see other stuff like comments on previous posts, new pictures, and updated tricks and flare stuff.
If you hate it, let me know via comment and I’ll consider your input. I’m still weighing the pros and cons.
Since there’s no real post here today, check out the comments on my post from a couple of days ago: foolish trust. My friend Tracy in L.A. has stepped up to prompt some good conversation. Kudos Tracy!
While you’re at it, leave a comment. Read one. Leave one. (Kind of like the little penny tray at the 7-Eleven, you know.) It will be fun. Promise.
I love you, too!
My oldest daughters introduced me to a TV show from 2004 called Joan of Arcadia that lasted only a couple of seasons on CBS.
It’s a silly, teenage, high-school drama. I love it.
I don’t love it for the drama, although sometimes it can jerk an emotional nerve and touch a tender spot.
I don’t love it for the acting, although it’s as good as any other cheesy high-school drama on TV, I suppose.
I don’t love it for the theological power it conveys, although I’m always impressed by a TV show that can take God seriously (and then get cancelled).
I love it because God always waves as he walks away from a conversation with Joan.
Joan Girardi, who lives in Arcadia, finds herself confronted by and speaking to God in various scenarios.
At various times in each episode, God shows up to talk to Joan. He usually says something smug or personal as she walks by and that’s how she realizes it’s him. Sometimes he’s the school janitor, or a punk kid with piercings and a mohawk, or an old lady in a book store, or some other character whom you’d never suspect to be deity.
God is basically just a wise, sensitive counselor in various human forms in Joan of Arcadia, dispensing advice that is sweet and helpful for Joan and her friends with some meaningful life lessons. It’s ridiculous, really, and absolutely cheesy and pop-culture with a spiritual twist.
I love it, though, really. I get all excited and jumpy when I see God in the hallway of Joan’s school. I love it when God shows up unexpectedly, dressed in some crazy garb and looking so human. She just talks to him, like a real conversation. Sometimes they cry and hug. Sometimes they fight. Sometimes it takes the whole episode for Joan to figure out what in the world he wants her to do.
The best part of all, though, is when God walks away from Joan after leaving their hallway rendezvous. The camera is focused on Joan and her friends in the foreground, starting their conversation again, and God is fading into the background.
As he fades, every time, after you’re sure he’s out of the scene and nobody’s looking, God waves. He waves. His back is to the camera, he’s walking away, and he raises his arm without turning around to face the camera and he waves as he walks away.
I love that.
I know. It’s silly. It’s brilliant.
God waves as he walks away, full of confidence, knowing he just made Joan more confused and she can’t possibly understand and he looks crazy dressed in Goth black with metal studs on his belt, and he waves.
It’s like a secret code, just between me and him. He’s fading from focus, he’s departing, but he knows that I can’t take my eyes off him. Regardless of what’s happening in the foreground, he knows I’m watching him in the background, and then he’s so confident that he doesn’t even have to turn to make sure I’m looking.
He just waves, certain I’m still watching and waiting for that sign. It’s our little secret of subtlety.
I like being able to pick up on God’s subtle signs. I think we’ve tried to make him too obvious, and I think he doesn’t like to be so obvious. We think God looks like this and says thing like that and behaves like so. But that’s not him.
God is in places you don’t expect him to be, saying things you would never think he could say, and contributing to stuff that’s not important to you.
Then, as he walks away, and we move on with our days, he waves. He just waves, without turning. Hoping, knowing, trusting that someone is watching and they know. I want to know when God waves. I want him to know I’m watching.
Talking to him, especially when he looks like an old woman, would be a bonus.
Just a quickie long list of blog stuff:
I’ve updated my blogroll and added a bunch of my regular reads. Please check them out, there’s some good stuff. If you have some blogs that are favorites, please share. In particular, if you like coffee, or if you know someone who does, please visit Coffee Ambassadors for some great Direct Trade coffee – great coffee, beautiful mission!
If you get my blog posts via email, I’m sorry that the formatting looks so weird, but I don’t know how to fix it. I’d recommend that you click on the title of the post in the email which will take you to my blog site, so you can read that post without having sentences and paragraphs running together.
If you don’t get my posts via email, I’d recommend you subscribe - you can use the link in the left margin of the site – just so you can know when I have a new post, since they’re sporadic sometimes.
(Note: I just updated my blog settings to only show partial posts in feeds. If you’re using Google or some other reader to see my posts, it will now only show the first few lines and you’ll have to click “… more…”, or whatever it says, to see the rest of it. This is an experiment. Let me know if you hate it, but be gentle.)
I added a link at the top of my site to “Send me a private note“. If you have something to say to me that you don’t feel comfortable putting in a public comment, you can just send me a note there and it will come to my email, so no one will see it but me. Keep in mind, though, that no return address is required, so if you want a response, you’ll have to tell me who you are and how I can get back to you.
If you’re a new reader, I have a ton of good posts that are old. Check out the archives or categories for more stuff.
If you are a long-time reader, and if you don’t hate me yet, do me a favor and send my link to some of your friends. My ego is large and I need a steady inflow of new fans to keep my spirits up. Thanks.
I’m on Facebook now and my blog posts show up there as notes. It’s a cool place to stay in touch and I like to do that. Please help.
Last thing: Please comment. I know that a lot of my posts don’t invite comments. I’ve tried to write some that do, but it feels fake. If anything you read, though, provokes any kind of reaction – positive or negative – please tell me. I can see the numbers of people who visit the site, but I have no idea if the writing is of any value unless you tell me. Value is good. Comments are good.
I love you, too.
This is awkward.
Renee and I haven’t used any form of birth control since just before she got pregnant with Ben.
Ben will be 11 in January. He’s our fourth kid. We have ten now. You do the math.
Actually, it turns out that nursing a baby is some kind of magical, slightly effective, birth control through some crazy hormonal influence happening in a woman’s body, probably because it’s just too much to ask a body to do all of that at once. That wears off after about 6 or 8 months, though.
Ayda is now 11 months old. Once again, you can do the math.
No, we’re not pregnant, yet. Neither of us. Odds are it’s only a matter of time. We’ll let you know.
So, we decided to go this crazy route because I was worried about the side-effects of a life on birth control medication. I also love kids, and I’m slightly unbalanced. Obviously, Renee also loves kids, and she’s also very unbalanced.
She initially only wanted three or so of the little folks, though. While I was contemplating side-effects, she happened to meet a woman who was living this lifestyle of no birth control. After a few weeks, we talked ourselves into it . . . as an experiement.
The experiment is going well. We’ve proven that married life without birth control leads to population growth. Eureka!
We’ve had big moments of pause in this process, as you would suspect, wondering what we’ve gotten ourselves into this time. But, so far, we keep arriving at the same place: let’s just see what happens (as if we didn’t know).
Our deal is this: we believe children are a blessing from God; we like God’s blessings; we don’t want God to stop giving us blessings. We also believe only God makes babies. Humans make love. God makes babies. (Actually, turns out, he made love, too.)
So, we came to the conclusion that God would stop giving us babies when he wanted us to stop having them. We kind of agreed to take no action to prevent kids. The requirement for action would be his.
Don’t worry. We’re not proselytizing. We believe this is some kind of funky personal calling. We can’t even figure out our own lives, so we’re not taking any chances on figuring out yours. We wouldn’t wish God’s blessings callings practical jokes shaping love on you, unless it’s him telling us to do the wishing.
Of course, though, we would wish trust upon you, and maybe shaping love comes with that.
Trusting God, it turns out, is entirely counter-intuitive to the human paradigm.
In fact, trusting God at all, with all of its requirements for faith in unseen things, intangible things, irrational things, and maybe even self-sacrificing things, just seems foolish most of the time.
So, here we are, staring deeply into our forties, and double-digit family size and wondering if God is ever going to stop blessing us in this way. Yes, that will make you pucker. Yes, we have lots of days that make it difficult to avoid shooting dirty-looks heavenward.
People generally don’t say so much about this nonsense to us directly anymore. They stopped that at about six kids. I’m pretty sure that lots of people think this kind of trust in God is foolish, though.
Back before we got really radical, people used to say stuff like, “Yes, that’s great, but God gave you a brain, and the means to stop babies from coming, and he expects you to use the brains and the means.”
Well, yes. God gave us brains. So we could be captains of our ships? So we could be in control of our own lives? So we could snub our noses at his attempts to direct us?
Okay, so we’re not looking for converts to the baby boom, but we’re definitely looking for converts to the trusting boom.
Where is God prompting you to trust him more? Where is God calling you to let your brain be used by him and for him? Would it be foolish to trust him with that thing? Would people call you crazy and tell you to use your brain?
Be careful, if you give in to God’s calling to trust, it could lead to blessings beyond imagination, in conjunction with trials and tribulations that make you all he needs you to be for his sake.
Be careful.
As Renee always says, “we may wonder what we’ve gotten ourselves into, but which of these kids would we want to give back?” If we had stopped at Ben, we would be missing six of the greatest things God has ever made.
If you stop now – if you use your brain to make rational decisions that keep you in control of your own environment and destiny – what will you be missing 11 years from now? Maybe it’s easier to answer this: In what area/issue is God calling you to trust him now?
“to seek from him who is our life, as the natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do, and be, and live, even when we are weary, — this is the victory that overcometh the world.”
- George MacDonald
“Life” – ‘Unspoken Sermons Second Series’
A minute ago I googled “marathon” to get the Wikipedia version of the story of its origin, but the first link that came up in the search results pointed to stories of the New York City Marathon event that occurred this morning, and the flashbacks began.
One year ago today, I ran the New York City Marathon with 38,000, or so, other runners along a course through all five boroughs of the city lined with an estimated 4-million spectators. It was my first marathon, and I was 40 years old. It was way over the top to run that one as my first, but I wasn’t sure I would ever do another one, and if you’re only going to do one . . .
I took 2 kids and my friend, Seth, with me to New York. They jumped on the subway several times during the race and intersected my route to cheer me on. The rest of the family was home, tracking me through the city on the computer.
I wore a chip on my shoe that monitored my progress along the course, and every time I crossed a 5-kilometer mark - the marathon distance is 42.195 kilometers or 26 miles and 385 yards – the high-tech system would send an email and text-message to my family members marking my distance and pace.
At each of those points, as I ran across the red carpets covering the high-tech gear, I was moved to tears. The thoughts of my family 2000 miles away, cheering me on through this crazy, vain, foolish, powerful experience was overwhelming to me.
I would talk to them at those points, quietly expressing my apologies for pursuing something so silly and spending so much time away from them all, and thanking them for supporting me, and asking them to pray for me because it was so hard.
Two weeks ago, in Denver, I completed my fourth marathon with my sister-in-law Angie by my side – that is, until she left me in the dust in mile 22.
At mile 17, just as we entered Washington Park, Renee and several of my children were waiting for me, along with Angie’s family. I stopped long enough to kiss everybody and give them sweaty hugs before moving on.
Renee had interrupted her scrapbooking retreat for the day to come watch me, which you know is no small sacrifice, if you know how much she loves those retreats. She and the rest of our cheering crew were able to catch us four times over the four miles we spent winding through Washington park.
The first time I saw them, it was all happy and fun. The second time, I was feeling the unavoidable pain of mile 19, and felt the wave of emotion as we passed them and I looked over my shoulder into Renee’s knowing eyes.
The third time, just a few minutes later, I noticed Renee and the kids running across the park to intersect our path, and I couldn’t hold back the emotion. When I reached her, the tears began to roll. I’m such a big, stinking crybaby. Renee cried, too, though.
Just as we were ready to exit the park, at mile 21, there they were again. I stopped and hugged Renee and sobbed on her shoulder for a few more seconds before turning to push forward. I could feel my energy waning and I coerced Angie into leaving me behind, so I wouldn’t be a drag on her pace.
They say, whoever they are, that the marathon distance is the ultimate test of human endurance, which is likely just a bunch of hype, but it sounds cool. Pushed to its limits, the body begins to run out of fuel between 16 and 21 miles. Regardless of your speed, in that phase of the race, your resources are depleted, and you can’t build them fast enough to make a difference in the last phase. The body actually begins to consume muscle tissue as fuel to sustain the workload, resulting in severe fatigue and pervasive pain.
Through mile 17, I’ve been keeping a consistent pace of about 8.6 minutes per mile. Mile 22 is just over 9 minutes. Mile 23 is 10 minutes. Mile 24 and 25 are over 11 minutes. Mile 26, smelling the finish line, and encouraged by other suffering runners, I improve again to 10 minutes, then hobble across the finish line holding hands with 3 of my children.
Then, I’m an emotional and physical wreck for another hour, alternating between fits of sobbing and cramping.
All of that information, though, is just background, I suppose, and I almost feel the need to apologize for belaboring the story. That is just the setting for whatever it is that happens in my soul in the course of four hours of running. It’s much easier, though, to tell the story which sits on the surface of the experience than to attempt to relate the heart of the matter.
Some metaphor for life, as you would suspect, lurks there among the weariness and weepiness, yet it remains elusive. My father used to sing a song about coming to the end of ourselves, and how God is all that is left at that point, and I wonder whether the metaphor carries a similar tune.
Regardless, there is value, I’ve learned, in finding the limits of ourselves; finding the places where we lose control and all our strength melts into sobbing. I’ve almost come to relish that place.
We sit too long and too often in the comfortable phases of life and I’ve felt the power of my own body dictating the course for my heart. But, there is revolutionary power in delivering a firm rebuke to the body with fortitude and perseverance.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re already weary – we all are – even among the so-called comforts. (A clue, perhaps, that they aren’t all that comforting.) Yet, I think this point is about pushing past the false, and self-imposed, boundaries of expected weariness, stripping them of the imagined fears they wield in our lives, to find the true and distant limits.
I’m certain it has little to do with marathons, though I’ve picked my poison from that shelf, the source of the challenge is really irrelevant, and has only a little to do with physical endurance.
Pick your own, but pick something. Pick something that says, “I refuse to be a servant to the whims of my body and its longing for comfort. I will persevere for something greater than me; something mysterious, perhaps. I will overcome.”
Somehow, in the process of overcoming the weariness, it’s possible to be overcome with more important things.
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