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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

One Word...Leave.



In leaving my home here in Annapolis, I have recieved encouragement and comfort from a great many people. There have been so many that have spoke words of confirmation and exhortation. I am reminded of the words of one of my favorite authors, Donald Miller. He wrote the following passage in the preface to his book, Through Painted Deserts. He comments on the nature of leaving as a means of arrival. I relate to this intensely as I leave my current life in order to become the husband and father I was created to be.I hope this gives you comfort to leave something behind in order to arrive at who you are becoming.


"I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.

Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once.

Time has pressed you and me into a book, too, this tiny chapter we share together, this vapor of a scene, pulling our seconds into minutes and minutes into hours. Everything we were is no more, and what we will become, will become what was. This is from where story stems, the stuff of its construction lying at our feet like cut strips of philosophy. I sometimes look into the endless heavens, the cosmos of which we can't find the edge, and ask God what it means. Did You really do all of this to dazzle us? Do You really keep it shifting, rolling round the pinions to stave off boredom? God forbid Your glory would be our distraction. And God forbid we would ignore Your glory.

HERE IS SOMETHING I FOUND TO BE TRUE: YOU DON'T start processing death until you turn thirty. I live in visions, for instance, and they are cast out some fifty years, and just now, just last year I realized my visions were cast too far, they were out beyond my life span. It frightened me to think of it, that I passed up an early marriage or children to write these silly books, that I bought the lie that the academic life had to be separate from relational experience, as though God only wanted us to learn cognitive ideas, as if the heart of a man were only created to resonate with movies. No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath:

I'll tell you how the sun rose
A ribbon at a time...

It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

I want to repeat one word for you:

Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed."


Thanks Donald...you are speaking my language.

- R

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Rick! Thanks for leaving your congrats in my blog -- I hardly ever go there, so I'm just seeing it now. I saw your link to Compassion on the side, too! Paul & I have a sponsored "son," Nelson Eboya, whom we've had for almost seven years now, through Compassion. Crazy thing is we just got another letter from him today. It's been absolutely wonderful being his American "parents," & Compassion is the best organization in their field!

shudson said...

Great post. Leave... it can be a scary word! On another note, I notice you recommended Velvet Elvis... really? Rob Bell? Just curious if you find it a good read b/c you agree with him or maybe you just find him interesting? We used to show the Nooma videos to our youth group. Anyway, have a great day! Stephanie (Kelley's friend :))

Rick Gebauer said...

I recommend Velvet Elvis because I agree with part of his premises, I disagree with part and I am forced to engage the ideas in order to bring personal resolution to the concepts. i don't know that I have ever read anything from anyone that I totally agree with, but I do think it is important to read things that challenge our preconceptions and assumed values...even if they don't change them. I read books written by atheists and humanists all the time. It is crucial for me to know other points of view in order to live in my own perspective with conviction...make sense?

Rick

shudson said...

Hi Rick, thanks for filling me in. I totally agree it's important to know about other philosophies in order to know what we believe and be able to explain ourselves better to others. I just wondered if you recommended him b/c you thought he was totally right. Thanks for clarifying. I liked his Nooma videos but think he has a weak view of scripture and seems to put too much authority in personal interpretation of the Word. I also am not willing to remove some of the "doctrinal bricks" from my wall of faith like he is. Well, it's getting a bit late for such deep thinking ;) Thanks for entertaining my questions! Stephanie

Heather said...

Hey Rick, Just wanted you to know that the Hofer's prayers (all 6 of us) are with you and your family at this time. May you know the Father's love surrounding you in a special way in this season. Know that He came to bear all of our sorrows. Heather for the Hofer's