Grace: why I need community (pt.1 of many)

I'm a very bad man....

OK, well, this is maybe an overreaction to the circumstances, but it sort of applies. Again, I'm confronted in the quietness of this evening with the realities that there are a number of things wrong with me....

... So, ladies & gentlemen of the jury, here's the testimony of this particular infraction; one more piece of evidence that shows that I'm no good at community & need some rehabilitation....

Last Saturday I was out for coffee with my good friend, Andrea, & we talked about (among other things), grace - both as a spiritual reality in each of our lives & as the title of a Jeff Buckley album. If you haven't heard the album, you should at least give it a try. It was recommended to me originally by Josip Vulic, a co-worker at Novatel who was/is also a fantastic musician & a lover of good guitar work.... it's a rich, rich album. Most of my exposure to the album has been the incredible blend & textures of the music & Jeff's voice.... I've sort of missed out on really chewing through the lyrics, though they sneak into my brain a bit here & there.... but it's just such a audibly rich album & one I figure most people should own (or at least sample).

Anyhow, I forget whether it was solely our conversation or other factors, but it made me hungry for listening to the album again (even with the ringing ears from last week). So I started searching through the 4-5 different stashes of CD's I have hidden around the house, went through the piles of albums that have been a part (big or small) of the music in my life... & yeah, I found nothing. (maybe it's 'cause I was looking for a black spine instead of a white CD spine)... but yeah, still can't find it & can't remember at all if I loaned it out or not.

So, Monday night I'm over at the community house & whining that I can't find my CD (mostly 'cause I'm internally flagellating myself for a messy, disorganized house & bad memory - wouldn't want to allow 'weakness' or plain humanity to creep into my life, now would I)... and in the middle of my whine, Andrea offers to loan me her copy. She's joined the digital revolution & has moved the majority of her CD's to mp3 & so she was quite happy to loan me the CD.

... and, so I hemmed & hawed, didn't actually say 'yes' to it & the evening moved on & we both forgot about it.....

...Wednesday night rolls around & I'm driving home from helping serve supper with the 'Jesus Loves You Society' ministry & I'm still craving the album, so I swing into HMV at Market Mall & pick up a copy. I reject the urge to buy the big double CD/DVDs for $40 each & feel sort of good about myself that I'm not splurging unnecessarily. So instead, I pick up the single CD for $16.99. On the grand scheme of things, I say to myself, this isn't that bad of a price for a CD & I figure I'll pee away $20 on less useful things. I figure this CD will do until I find my copy & then I could keep it as the loaner CD & so I walk out feeling sort of justified with myself, now ready to both enjoy the music & share it around.....

.... today I listen to it at work, all the same rich textures I remember, my ears catch more of the lyrics & it's all rich & intoxicating & wonderful.....

...and tonight, after hanging out with my parents I'm re-arranging things in the basement a bit (moving around some of my transformers, more of my collection of 'stuff') & I'm thinking about looking for the CD one more time.....

...and in the stillness of the evening, the reality of what I'm doing starts to dawn on me....

In my life, I love to be a giver. It's just part of my heart & something I live for. When I see a need, I try to fill the need. I love to listen to the hearts of those around me, listen for King David crying for water from Bethlehem & then go rushing through the philistines to grab him a drink... & yeah, maybe there's nothing wrong with this.....

...or maybe there is... maybe sometimes I get in the way of God (sometimes I'm definitely His hands, but now I'm starting to question that again).... maybe there are places of where God wants to grow things in a person through need or lack & I'm blocking His work by trying to 'help'... maybe God wants to show His miraculous intervention in people's lives & my non-miraculous band-aid solutions get in the way of real provision, of real faith....

...and other times, my desire to help gets twisted into one more of the fig leaves I try to put on to cover my nakedness... sometimes it's done out of pride, sometimes it's this thing of where the good feelings that come from giving to people become sort of addictive & to feel good about me, I'll try to give to fill up the empty places....

.... but I don't receive well. I'm likely constantly frustrating my roommate David 'cause he keeps trying to find stuff to 'bless' me with & I always greet them with lack luster appreciation. In my mind, I have a lot of 'stuff', too much likely. The 'stuff' I want, I buy. I'm an engineer making too much money & have no dependants & no debt & so I tend to squander my money 'cause I don't appreciate it (& by squander I mean I blow it on my collections (G.I Joes, transformers, CDs or DVDs - or books sometimes, but they're different) or I give it away to people). Money doesn't have a really good value in my life. Part of this is from recognizing that money is just paper, it's dust, it will not buy the things we really need which is love, community & friendship... so part of me only sees money as a tool to get people where they're going or to help me indulge in the random crap that I find some degree of pleasure in. The other reason is that I don't really feel i earn my money. When I worked for my dad doing construction, at the end of the day, you feel like you've earned every cent. As an engineer, I take the money for granted 'cause it's not like I've 'worked' that hard for it. I guess maybe that's a wrong perspective. I get paid to think, make decisions, deal with the stress of making choices that affect the outcome of billion dollar contracts.... but I think there is a level of abstraction with my work where I really never see a finished product & so I feel like my days at the office are spent in futility, sand through the hourglass without a real measurable finished product to show for your effort....

All that to say, that I'm a lousy person to give gifts to 'cause I keep indulging myself instead of leaving room for people to give me things (ask my friend the angel).

& I've got these really weird ideas on property rights. I'm not sure where this comes from, but I have this really strong sense of what is 'my stuff' vs. someone else's stuff. 'My stuff' are things that I can do what I want with. If I take good care of it or destroy it, it's my business, I paid the money for it, it's mine & so if I'm not careful with it, I reap those consequences. Other people's 'stuff' on the other hand is treated with a level of reverence. it's not something I've earned, it's borrowed & doesn't belong to me, so I treat it, most times, with the respect that I'd treat the person who has loaned me it. Though this doesn't always fit - I've had people loan me books & I've spilled stuff on them & will then buy them a brand new copy of the book & keep their original copy. I have other books loaned to me a long, long time ago (e.g. the poems of Hafiz) that I keep neglecting to return to people.... & these things eat away at me.

I hate borrowing stuff. It's something really odd in me. I'm afraid or something of taking responsibility for other people's stuff. Maybe it's just 'cause I know I'm not that responsible... Something in this is the same reason why I always ring the bell when I visit people's places. It's their property & I've got no rights there unless welcomed in. & this is so hard wired that it's hard to enter in even when you're given a standing invitation to just walk in the door.

Maybe it's that I don't like to be a receiver. I think there's something from my family that has fostered this self-reliance. As a family, we stuck to our own. We looked after ourselves & were taught to look out for family. We ended up cut off from our relatives in some ways because of conflicts within the extended family. Maybe it's the independent baptist thing where we sort of believed we were the only Christians on planet earth. But somewhere in there, I had it ingrained in me to make my own way... to be generous, to give liberally, but to make sure you look after yourself.... For whatever reason we were not a family that seemed to take handouts... or never really seemed to need them.....

...& so maybe it's habit, maybe it's pride, but yeah... I don't receive well....

...and so here I sit, loving the ability to give to others & almost expecting that others will be willing to receive whatever I extend to them... & I'm miserly in receiving, my heart closed up to even the smallest expressions of love & friendship. Being loaned a CD is perhaps not the highest sacrifice, most costly gift that someone could give, but if I'm balking at that, then what in the world am I going to do when I really need help?

It's a wonder in some ways that I'm a Christian with this heart... the whole thing about Christianity, the thing that sets it apart from every religion on the planet, is this thing called grace.... At the root, the heart of Christianity is a gift, the gift of life through Jesus's death... it's a gift that is freely & unconditionally given with an open hand.... but it's a gift that has to be received. The receiver must confess need, must confess that they can't get this gift themselves, & must rely on, trust, the hand of the giver that they are indeed benevolent & good & full of love & not just giving something with expectations, conditions or strings attached....

... and so my subtle refusal to borrow the CD from Andrea, the waste of buying another CD instead of borrowing just highlights the reality that I'm crooked deep down... there is something not right in me that would rather spend money on stuff I likely don't need instead of just receiving the smallest act of kindess of a dear friend....

...this is why I don't do very well with community (among many, many other reasons). I'm stubbornly self-reliant & don't receive grace well... I'm getting slightly better, but yeah, long, long ways to go on that...

& if you fully look at it, this does make me a 'bad man' or at least a broken one... I talk about love, look to give love & then turn my back on even the small expressions of love... Part of this stems from pride, from wanting to be god of my own little world... part of it stems from fear & pain & years of self-hatred that tells me I don't deserve the love or that other's 'stuff' is so much more sacred & i'll sully it with my unwashed hands... but at the end of the day, no matter what the explanation is, it means I'm broken. I need love & yet turn away from love... I need the true gifts that money can't buy - friendship, kindness, respect, love.... and yet will turn from receiving those to buy crap to numb the empty places that are there 'cause I'm not receiving the love that is offered me.....

... all in all that's pretty @#&#ed up.... (though I get the sense that maybe I'm not the only person on the planet with these issues).... all in all what it means is that I need grace - primarily the gift from God, but also the gift from people (even if it's as metaphorically obvious as receiving albums called 'grace' from good friends)

So to Andrea, the angel, David, & all the other plethora of people who try to show me love & I wiggle my way out of receiving, I'm sorry. I apologize & ask for grace.... I'm not that good at the friendship thing & yeah, I'm going to take a lot of work... & a lot of patience & love...