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I went to India. Summer of 08’. The year prior was rather difficult. Stuck. Tired of not connecting to a culture and worldview I was supposed to be a part of. Somehow always feeling like a stranger around people who looked like me, and lived like me.
When you are a stranger in a familiar yet strange land, it becomes increasingly hard to listen to your heart. Every time it speaks up to tell you what is right and you turn to the person on your left or right, you may get a blank stare. A tree in the woods. After a while you stop speaking.
Let me tell you about the heart. It is crafty. It will have its way. When you release in emotional outbursts that don’t make sense, the heart is trying to get out. Listen deeply to those emotional outbursts, some truth lies in there.
In and amidst depression or lethargy or whatever you would call it, there were two things that would consistently bring me to tears.
Every time I read Mother Theresa’s words or watched this cheesy movie about her.
She has taught me to see the incarnation of Jesus not as a one time event, but as a continuing process. One carried out by God’s people, as they bind the broken, and break bread with the poor. Which is especially true as everyone comes to realize their own poverty. We are all poor, and in need of the Body of Christ to come and share in our poverty, as Jesus did when He lived on Earth. Embracing His own poverty and breaking bread and sharing in ours. I think there is a poverty that exists inside a Being that loves His creation so much yet rarely sees it returned. How poor is our God, and how inexhaustibly rich.
Sometimes I wish my poverty were far gone. That it would be taken away, but what would I have to share, my abundance? I think part of being whole is having a lack.
Breathe in, breathe out. Poverty and abundance. The practice of Sabbath.
The reason I cry when I hear Mother Theresa is because I see my home. I see where I was meant to be. Among a people who are broken and know it, and I hope to be loved by a body so hellbent on loving, that they would accept my poverty and invite me to sit down and eat, unveiled.
The other reason…
Whenever I hear beautiful music. Particularly a scene from Copying Beethoven at the premier of his 9th symphony. Every time I watch that scene, I think to myself. There is no way it will still bring a tear to my eye. And of the ten or so times I’ve watched it, it has never failed.
I know what this music meant to him. It meant everything, it was the full expression of an endlessly complex soul, which we all posses. For a deaf man, he spoke with clarity and precision, through his music, in a way words or discussion could never do.
The reason I cry when I hear music is because I see what I was meant to do. Speaking through notes, ideas, moods, and layers of subconscious meaning. Weaving together stories and tones with emotion and life.
Presently, both of these things are converging. The great poverty I posses is an inability to finish a musical theater project, but it goes deeper than that, it has to do with my hopes/thoughts on Grace, Providence, Failure, Acceptance, and Communication with God, as well as His existence. It won’t be terribly difficult to finish, yet I still pull everything else I can in my path. I avoid it, and I have tried every thought to understand why; for five years now. I still have no real answer, but many little ones along the path.
Maybe its not important to know why. Maybe it is more important to sit with my poverty, accept it, and breathe out. Breathe in and finish the musical. Breathe out and let my souls expression be seen on a stage. Breathe in and accept the fellowship and let their acceptance wash over me.
I hope.
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