Sounding Through

I started reading Henri Nouwen's Spiritual Formation a few days ago.  What a feast for thought.  I don't want to write a book review, but this is certainly a book that should be read slowly, and lately, I'm feeling hungry inside for something good and true.

I read about a sculptor who worked tirelessly day after day carving a slab of marble.  A little girl would come by as often as she could to watch him.  When he finished, the little girl approached the sculptor, stared at his fantastical sculpture of a lion and said something to the effect of, "How did you know there was a lion inside that marble?"  Nouwen goes on to describe the sculptor's secret:  what he knows by heart he already sees in the marble.  

I have this growing conviction that the more I allow God to penetrate my thoughts in conjunction with my heart, he opens doors to me in all sorts of "marble" whether it be nature or people or music or works of art or even my experience of time.  I learn to see rich things buried behind the ordinary.  And as romantic as this may sound, it's so subtle that it often happens without my realizing it, and it doesn't look all that romantic along the way.

For example, the other day I was contemplating these things and feeling so spiritual and wonderful, my thoughts basically lifting me to the heavens while I vacuumed the carpet (a rather annoying sight I'm sure to anyone feeling the least bit melancholy).  Then I decided to catch up on the goings-on on Facebook.  Bad choice. 
Apparently it doesn't take much for me to switch between spiritual euphoria and crazy dragon lady.  Someone posted a youtube video of North Koreans mourning the loss of Kim Jong Il.  Fine.  Whatever.  What really pissed me off was the ridicule surrounding this video.  And comment-addict that I am, I had to read all the comments and every single person who commented also proceeded to make fun of the manner in which these people grieved, however genuine or fake.  I could not think of one intelligent thing to say.  I typed in a nastygram but deleted it when this annoying little voice in my head said, "Remember.  If you slap a pig, you too will get muddy."  Well.  I am many things but I am certainly no pig slapper!  *takes off helmut, sheaths sword, cracks knuckles for continued opitmal typing* 

Why was I angered so easily?  Really?!  And how deep-seated was my theological-scupltor-meditation that its euphoric effects could be shattered over this?  Later that night it hit me.  This is what Nouwen was talking about.  How do we allow rich thoughts about spiritual truth to penetrate our inner-most being (you know, that place that gets so easily angry with others)?  That, friends, is the question.

While I'd like to think that I am the theology-sculptor seeing God in all the world's marble, I think that the primary truth is that I am first and foremost the marble, and when I stand still and tell God what I really honestly think, he starts chipping away until I am more than I was.  My vision clears, and the fusion between thought and being somehow takes place.  Opaqueness morphs into transparency and gradually I feel free to simply be.  No hiding.  No need to be defensive or controlling.  No more need to define my identity entirely by the reactions of others or how they perceive me. 

Now that the fog has cleared I understand why I was so angry.  While I lived in China, I had a friend from North Korea, and when I see North Koreans, I see my friend's face.  It's easy to ridicule faceless communities of people detached from one's reality.  It's impossible when my own journey is bound up with theirs, and theirs has been such a dark journey. 

Time for another corresponding thought lately.  I also read that the word "person" originates with the Old French rendering per-sonare, which means to "sound through."  Nouwen's theory is that we were created for true and good things to sound through us in endless creative avenues of expression and being. The problem is that all too often the comparmentalization between thinking and being just deceives us into believing that we embody something simply because we are able to think about it in deep or cute or clever ways.

Yesterday I started reading a novel:  Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  Mr. Norrell is a practical magician in the early 19 century.  At this time magic no longer existed in England and the society of magicians (who are nothing more than scholars) gather frequently to discuss at length the history, theory, and philosophies of magic.  They love to think.  And what's more, they love to talk about what they think.  But they are terrified to practice magic (though they would never admit it).  So terrified, in fact, that a large part of their scholarly endeavors are even dedicated to the justification of the non-existence of magic.  Magicians who hearitly and very proudly refuse to practice magic.  I could not help but chuckle over the absurdity, rapidly followed by my own panicked whisper, "I'm not like that with theology, am I?"  Shoot. 

Enter Mr. Norrell, who claims to possess magical powers.  "Prove it!" his peers demand.  And he does, and when he does, the entire society of magicians find themselves irrelevant, and their society disbands.  I think all too often we believe we are Mr. Norrell simply because we have a storehouse of magical cliches for any number of things.  We think we're Jesus because we have the scriptures memorized (some of us can even read it in the Greek).  What Nouwen is calling for is a person who embodies truth holistically .  He would say that when we allow God to penetrate our inmost self, a space is created for truth to sound through our very being.

In short, these are the thoughts haunting me in the best possible way lately.  Basically, I want to be Mr. Norrell.  I just want to be someone the magic can sound through.