A Key Retrieved

I had a dream I was in a gymnasium with a friend of mine--the man who is a Bible and an English teacher at the school where I teach, as well as the high school principal. The dream was set at a sporting event. He and I spotted a set of keys on the floor and both reached to pick them up at the same time as we stood there on the sidelines in front of the crowded bleachers, while people watched the competition that went on beyond us. When we touched the keys, simultaneously seeking to retrieve what had been unwittingly dropped and forgotten, our hands strangely became like one hand--like one flesh and one being--as we raised the keys. We faced each other and the strangeness of the moment was on both our faces.

Because our relationship in the waking world permits such a "vision" to be a prompt for prayer, we prayed together about this dream I had. A day or so later, I felt the urge to share with him some of my writing on the relationship of the Beloved and the Bride--things scattered here and there throughout this blog over the last couple of years, mostly the stuff that is in the form of poetry. I asked him to be my copy editor, to help me discern an "order" to the poems, to decide if some did not belong, this was the beginning of his hand in the writing...but maybe not the end of it. Strangely, when he opened the binder's cover, the first line contained imagery that confirmed the authenticity of this Divine assignment by serving to repeat an image that a friend of his had brought prominently into conversation just the night before: the image of the rib of Adam that would form Eve, a fitting highlighting considering the tone and theme of the text. Was this the key? And, were our hands one in the raising of this text? Does he have a part in writing some of it as well? These questions still hang loosely behind a work progress.

I've written a lot on this blog, and much of what is here feels like it comes from my own heart and mind, but some of the words here feel more like I have written in service to a mind larger than my own, a mind that dictates rather than inspires, a mind that assigns and then defines the results of my research. These are the writings I've shared with my friend--the writings that don't really feel like they are solely my own. So he reads them over this holiday break. The last thing I asked him was, "Maybe you can tell me what I am supposed to do with this?" I am not a writer by trade. I don't teach writing in school. The one time I cracked a book about getting published, I read almost immediately that to retain the services of a decent agent, one must write a letter of self-introduction that should outline one's credentials for publication. That was it for me--I have no credentials to serve as a foundation for "saleable"writing.

But over this break, I've been reading a wonderful book called Prayer, by Richard J. Foster. In it, he quotes numerous authors whose words span from antiquity to now; and whose words, like mine are not necessarily the product of years of training in formal, devotional writing. They are simply people sharing their stories about their deepening relationships with God. Foster notes things like Kierkegaard's words about Scripture having "contemporaneity" that does not "merely parallel but actually intersects the present." And I though: why, I've sited such anecdotes here from our lives, but because not many writers in the Christian market do that, I thought it weird. I also noticed how Foster reflected on something I've only heard mentioned once before--the sanctified imagination. He notes that God will use our imagination even as He uses our faculties of reason. And in answer to those who balk that Satan could manipulate our imagination, therefore we should shun such activity, to them he says: are not our powers of rational thought likewise "fallen" and subject to that same evil influence, yet we don't shun using it. I loved that response! "To believe that God can sanctify and utilize the imagination is simply to take seriously the Christian idea of incarnation. God so accommodates, so enfleshed Himself into our world, that He uses the images we know and understand to teach us about the unseen world of which we know so little and find so difficult to understand." Well, I've regurgitated the product of that type of cud-chewing all over this blog! Then he quotes Alexander Whyte as saying "...with your imagination anointed with holy oil...at one time you are the publican; at another time, you are the prodigal...at another time, you are Mary Magdalene: at another time, Peter in the porch." I've certainly experienced this sense of our own lives overlapping the stories set in scripture. I've described it as being on the same "bubble of righteousness" as is found in Scripture: God's benchmark stories of relationship, with the bubble image coming from my image of the Bride's gown, swelling up with such bubbles, and being described in scripture as being formed of the righteous acts of the saints.

As I read these words from such remote figures on the Christian landscape and so many other examples in his text, I am struck by the commonality of the relationship factor between what appears in these quotes and my own current experiences. How different they are from much of what I hear and read from Christian speakers and authors of today. I do not mean any disrespect, but so much of it is all about making this life here in this kingdom here more profitable and more comfortable and more productive in Christian terms. So little of it is about that mysterious communion with the Divine Presence whose love and power is so mind-boggling you can hardly describe it rather than to say it makes all these other "important" things seem like clutter to crawl over on the way to this--this Oneness. At best, I have found books full of wise dissection of Scripture, but rarely have I found books of passionate devotion to God. Now, in this book on prayer, I find quotes that ring a common tone to my own experience of relationship with God, these last few years, but these words are from ancient writers , and I think again of the forgotten keys on the floor in my dream. I thnk of the "game" where we watch and are invested in the outcome, but do not really participate in anything, and I think of so many modern definitions of the Christian walk...is this really important, God? How would You reach out in prevenient grace to this kingdom that has become such a world of spectators?

Funny, I took a walk on New Year's Day alone in the cold. No people were outdoors, and many of the Christmas decorations had fallen in a strong wind. But a few houses still had windchimes hanging. I reflected on how differently I receive a windchime's song depending on the season: the same sound that is so cheerful in a spring or summer breeze sounds so mournful in an icy wind. And in terms of sharing my "song" with others, I certainly feel like a windchime in winter--until I read this compilation of spots of light from so many historic Christians. So now I'm taking a new look at my own recorded reflections--especially as I read this text that Foster quoted from Thomas a Kempis about what we should seek to read in our devotional life:
"Search for truth in holy writings, not eloquence. All holy writing should be read in the same spirit with which it was written...Do not let the writer's authority or learning influence you, be it little or great, but let the love of pure truth attract you to read."
I suppose if I would make a prayer over what You'd have come of the words I put to page for you, my Lord, it would be that Kempis' system of "grading" a text would earn me an "A" and that if it is shared with anyone, it might be received on these grounds alone. Praise be to You, the author and finisher of our faith!