The Sh!t Hit the Fan This Week

It did. On several different fronts. And it's funny because I'm not the only that noticed: a lot of it is a repeat of what I went through last year. But yes, I am just going to leave it that vague.

The truth is, I'm okay. I'm kind of shocked about it, actually, but I'm okay. I was not okay going through this last year. But God is good, and I'm experience what Paul means when he talks about a "peace that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds." Circumstances are in a state of abject fury right now (I also just wanted to use the word "abject") but I have a deeply seated peace that I'm not sure I've ever really experienced like this before.

I'm definitely not complaining, I'm marveling. I'm marveling to feel the work that He has indeed done in me. Thank You, Father.

I feel like I'm at a weird crossroads right now, but I have a feeling the decision will make itself--even though I have no idea what that means. I am over the moon to be going back to Alaska this summer. But I do wonder what it's going to feel like...

Right now, it feels like home. It feels like I'm going home to wonderful and difficult all at the same time and I don't know how I'm going to process it. I've changed, I know I have. My thoughts on things have changed, and I've been through a lot these past 3 years.

I wonder if I'll still have a place there, and what that place will look like. I wonder if I'll get there and dread leaving again, or if I'll spend this summer there and feel like I've had my fill of it by the end--like I'm supposed to move on. Right now I can't imagine feeling that way, and I don't want to, but I know life and Jesus have a funny way of changing our hearts and minds.

I do know that this summer holds the bar exam for me. I'm going up there and I'm pretty much staying in a hole until August. I cannot get distracted.

Mmm, but those mountains though. I can't wait. 

It May Come

Been to hell and back
And this you cannot judge
Till you can also tell me also
That you've chosen how you'd go

Been to hell and back
There's no horizon there
Just some lies and pretty death
Looked an awful lot like Rome

How I'd go would be different
Though pain I'd never choose
Everyday a new face and scene
But hell is hot and everything's to lose

She didn't prove that she was worth it,
Better than what waits me here
Those eyes that say, don't forget
And the laugh of my daddy's stare

It's not time yet, hell's here too
I’ll wait, I’m not alone to see
But I guess I see heaven here too
Though it’s not like Rome,

It may come
And I want to help it be.

-T. Emerson

Interesting. I guess this is it.

So I guess...this is it.

I came to Italy with so many questions and I've been here 2 months, almost, and have not gotten the answers I sought.

Instead, true to my Savior's form, I have gotten other answers, and a resounding reminder of who is God. Newsflash: it's not me.

This is my list of questions, I believe, that I previously enumerated:

1. Why I’m even in Italy.
2. Why I’m in law school—when I hate it.
3. What You’re doing with my life.
4. And God, that You haven’t forgotten about me.

And this is the list of answers I've gotten:

1. I AM.
2. I AM.
3. I AM.
4. I AM.
5. AND THAT IS ENOUGH.

Ouch. But...wow. 

I knew that there was a possibility that God was allowing me to come here to answer this question that I've had since I was 18 years old of "am I supposed to be in Italy?" And I knew that there was the distinct possibility that the answer to that question may be: NO.

So I guess...this is it. I guess, I don't know, maybe I will be back but I guess this summer was not supposed to be about me getting all of my little head's dreams fulfilled, but rather my heart getting re-centered and reminded of WHO is God and that I am actually created for satisfaction in Him, not for the realization of my dreams.

When did I get so off track? I don't really know.

I gaze at these few words and I'm amazed at how many thoughts, emotions, tears, and prayers fill in the lines and spaces between everyone of these characters and words. There's so much more to what I'm saying right now, but I don't feel like I can write about it on here. I guess there are still some things that are too personal right now.

But that's okay, because the point is that I know who is God. The point is that I know what He has done in me...and I think that's what I ultimately came to Italy for.

He had given me the word "intimacy" for this year, and that's what He's doing--and that's what I'm going to keep praying for. Deeper still, and more intimacy with Him.

I mean, if I'm really, really searching for that "thing" I'm created for then--this is it, right?

Make it so, Lord. And then take me home, and may I be satisfied that this is, apparently, not the place I'm supposed to be. 

But thank You, for knowing your daughter well enough to know that she had to GO to get that question's sound response.

Thank you.

If You're going to Kill: Kill Systemic Hate

My heart bleeds for my country when, I learn from my friends overseas that we are known for this: making war. We are good at this--and now we're destroying ourselves and the democratic institution that we also killed to build. They shake their heads and ask me if I've seen what's going on and if I can explain: I can't.

I'm speechless.

There's no logic to all of this. My nation is also known for getting involved in other peoples' conflict worldwide and we think that we are promoting an ideal of "freedom" in places that need it...but a house divided cannot stand. America has vowed to fight terrorism, but we're terrorizing ourselves.

I'm pro-LIFE, I'm pro-DUE PROCESS. I'm pro-COP, and pro-BLACK. I'm pro-TRUTH. 

And I'm pro-JUSTICE. Make no mistake, justice and law are two different things. The law is merely a (often inadequate) means to arrive at some semblance of justice--but the only way to fill in the blank between law and justice is the only thing that can effectively see the grey and nuances of every situation: love.

Please go shoot some of that back into this bleeding world and go have the courage to gaze someone in the eyes and know that a soul like yours exists in them, regardless of what color they are or wear.

...

When terror claims where peace should reign
Despair finds company there.

Where "hope" seems but a hollowed out sign
with no significance to spare

The hard faced question drills its way
then, back into position:

Is there horizon and what does it mean
for sight seems a sole solution.

If the senses cannot process this,
or verify existence

How can that distant line remain
Mid terror's plaguing instance?

The line called distant is actually there,
By virtue of terrestrial curve

Even if terror's impenetrable night
cannot lucidity serve.

So then is hope, a matter of will,
Or a choice in perspective due,

For somehow horizon always dawns
After nightfall's interminable hue.

Hope exists like earth's round way,
though the senses may not perceive

Hope's purpose or nocturnal mode
of operation wholly unseen.

Force of Law (School)

I think I may have gotten to the bottom of why I hate law school. I'm not going to say for sure, though, because it seems like every time I think I've gotten to the "bottom of something" things somehow get deeper. 

Of all things, though, I don't know why I'm ready to write about this. I guess maybe I need to explain to myself why I hate what I'm doing and try to turn it into something positive (no pun intended). 

I took a class on the philosophy of law this year (otherwise known as "Jurisprudence"). During this course I ran across, yet again, the name Jacques Derrida. The guy keeps appearing in my life. I wish his stuff weren't so interesting, I want to just forget about him. Curiosity won again and I found myself on a rabbit trail trying to understand the guy, again, and ended up finding the following gem(s) in an article about his work on the law: 


Surprisingly, in "Force of Law;' Derrida comes very close to setting up a full-scale theory of justice and an accompanying account of law....Derrida's ultimate goal is laudable: to set forth a concept of justice that demands a tireless, impossible, and incalculable vigilance to ensure that justice is done to the other....

Several important themes emerge in Derrida's "Force of Law," but the following points are essential: (i) deconstruction is not politically nihilistic-to the contrary, it recognizes an unceasing call to do justice to the other at all costs; (ii) there is a distinction between law and justice, such that justice is not deconstructable, yet law can be deconstructed; (iii) deconstruction reminds us that law can never reach a stage of complete justice, since justice is transcendent and never wholly imminent...

[The author goes on to name a couple of other points]

Justice is deemed an "experience that we are not able to experience" and involves an experience of aporia. Although these comments seem cryptic, Derrida's main point is that justice, properly understood, should not be confused with positive law....[Furthermore, t]he call to justice reveals a responsibility without limit, a sort of bottomless duty to the other. [And, i]n contrast to justice, "law" is a system of determinate rules....

Derrida's understanding of law follows Pascal (who in turn was following Montaigne) in the notion that the legal system is not founded on reason or justice, but upon an act of interpretive violence. Montaigne recognized that law is "nomos" (convention), and hence it derives from custom and cannot be justified on deep moral principles. Of any particular law, it can be asked, "What is the authority for this law?: and then again "What is the authority for this authority?" By tracing the chain of authority backwards, we must eventually acknowledge that the law is not "based" on anything beyond arbitrary custom backed by state violence. Because there is no rational point of origin for the law, it is self-grounding. 

[Here Derrida and I split for a moment:]

...people begin to believe that the law is grounded in a higher order (God, reason, natural law), instead of realizing that the law is largely a fictional creation which self-perpetuates (in the sense that laws get their authority from other laws, in a circular system of self-referencing support). 

[And here I rejoin him:]

So there is a tendency to collapse justice into positive law, which results in a sort of naive legal positivism: the view that there is no justice over and apart from the rights and remedies available on the existing legal system. In order to combat this position, Derrida adamantly insists that justice cannot be collapsed into law. So we can never say, in good conscience, that "the law is [fully] just [emphasis mine]...The mystical foundation lies beyond the parameters of the legal system. Justice is located in this 'beyond,' since justice cannot become fully present in the existing legal system....

In "Force of Law"...Derrida seems to be laying the groundwork for an approach to jurisprudence which insists upon an almost dialectical struggle between law and justice....

But, and here is the main point, the law can be changed so that its foundations more clearly reflect the demands of justice. Justice must be vigilant toward law, it must interrogate and haunt the law. 

All of the above from: Litowitz, Douglas, Derrida on Law and Justice, 8 Can. J. L. & Jurisprudence 325 (1995).

Derrida saw law and justice as two different things, and viewed the construction of law as having a distinct duty to be ever on a trajectory toward the better reflection of justice. Though it may never be fully attained, the duty that law owes justice also demands perpetual perseverance.

I guess I resonate with this because I realize that I have far more of a passion for justice than I do the law. The law is often so ineffective, even if it's necessary. Justice is a mirage on paper and in the courts, and I hate that. 

But here's the thing, Paul totally talks about this--albeit indirectly. He talks about how: "now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." (I Cor. 13:12). I truly believe that the "justice" we see and even that which we aspire to is only a dim reflection of true justice, we're trying to mirror something that we can't fully imitate without another salient ingredient. And even then, it's not justice at its full potential.

That said, it's not lost on my that this reference to a dim mirror is embedded in the famous "love chapter." I think that (I'm risking sounding like a West Coast hippy here) the only thing that can keep the law moving forward toward that undeconstructible notion of justice is, actually, love. 

Because it's only love that sees each situation individually. The law necessarily can't. You make a law and you exclude--necessarily. But the law is still a necessary structure--and love has to take some form in order to be imparted and, God-willing, well-expressed--because it's like a language.

Which is another reason why I think Derrida may have been more of an authority on the issue than many give him credit for. Most of the man's work was on the linguistic bent--his foray into jurisprudence was slightly out of the norm for him, but I actually think that the relationship that law has to justice is highly analogous to the relationship between meaning (in the broader sense) and language.

Anyway, this cavernous gap between law and justice, I think, is one of the deeper reasons that I find law school highly unfulfilling. It's hard to read case after case in which the outcome is perfectly--sometimes shockingly--legal and so much of the time a world away from "just." It's hard to not get disillusioned and frankly, it just gets harder to care.

I don't know what I want to do with this degree when I'm done. I don't have any idea what God's doing with my life, and that's become clearer than anything in the last month. But I do know that it's not the law that I'm passionate about, at all. I've always had a passion for justice, truth, understanding...tout ça...so where this is going?

WHO KNOWS?

Socratic Parable

I had some difficult questions posed to me this weekend. Some Divine, some from people, and I’ve continued to think about how Socratic God can be sometimes.

I ask Him a question, and He comes back at me with others that actually point to the heart of the issue. It’s unnerving, and healing. It’s unnerving because it undoes me. It breaks me down and it gets to the very heart of the issue that almost never lingers on the surface but hides and lurks below other questions and ends up being uglier than anything I was prepared to face in the first place. But in this unnerving, undoing somehow it heals.

It looks so cliché when I write that.

Whatever.

I keep finding myself saying, internally (and sometimes externally) “I didn’t sign up for this.” But the fact is, I did. I DID sign up for this.

I keep thinking about a chapter in Tim Keller’s book King’s Cross, wherein he unpacks the story of Jesus healing the bleeding woman—while he’s on his way to another man’s home to heal a little girl.

I get choked up sometimes when I think about it, because Keller’s interpretation goes deep for me. Keller points out that for both persons seeking healing, Jesus ends up asking far more from them than they bargained for, but the truth of each story is that they end up also receiving far more than they asked for.

Here’s how it goes. Mark 5:21-43.

When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 

And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 

Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” 

“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” 
While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. 

“Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?” Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” 

He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. 

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). 

At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Keller makes a few points (probably more than I can remember, but here goes).

The man...

This man was high up in the Synagogue. Already, coming to Jesus was going to cost him some reputation, surely. But, his daughter was acutely and immediately sick. His love for his daughter won. The situation was urgent, and he persuaded Jesus, in faith, to come. But then, Jesus seems to get…distracted?!

The woman...

The woman had a chronic, seemingly non-diagnosable disease. Jesus stopped himself en route to treat an emergency situation to enquire as to who had touched him. This is the first shocking point. It seems like he has his priorities mixed up.

The woman, it seems, just wanted, in faith, to tap into Jesus’ power for a moment and then escape--unnoticed. He then calls her out, brings her forward, and asks her to tell her story.

As a woman, this story makes me cringe. I can’t imagine having to tell this story in public, even today. I can’t imagine explaining myself in front of a crowd full of people and describing over a decade of bloody discharge from my body and my despair at ever having a normal life.

I can’t imagine what that would be like even now, much less back then. Her body, by law, effectively made her an outcast, and anyone who touched her. I can imagine that the crowd pressed around her and Jesus in this moment promptly recoiling in disgust and self-preservation. Probably a reaction that she had become accustomed to, at least to some degree, but probably not from a whole crowd.

And then Jesus speaks life to her. He calls her a daughter and speaks life and freedom over the rest of her existence: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

I think her suffering didn’t just mean the physical part. I can’t imagine what such a 12 year old ordeal would do to a woman’s psyche and then to deal with the consequences of Jewish law on top of that!

But then, the man again…

So then, there’s dad, looking on to this situation, wondering if Jesus has lost his ever loving MIND, when he daughter is at home urgently ill and DYING. And then the servants come and announce that it’s already happened. She’s gone.

“What’s the use?” They say. She’s gone. But then Jesus looks at this man. And the way I imagine it is a rather piercing gaze. One that somehow reaches to the furthest recesses of the Jarius’ conscient soul and says 5 words: “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” Jarius, I think it’s safe to assume, DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS. The audacity of Jesus’ brevity, as well as him stopping in the middle of the street to hear this woman’s 12-year-long story—I can imagine—did everything but make Jarius SNAP in two. “Who is this man?!” I can imagine him thinking/feeling. “I came to him in faith but this is more than faith this is something else—this is…crazy!”

Then the end of the story is even more amazing than what Jarius had signed up for. Jesus didn’t just heal a sickness, he brought the little girl back to life in a moment that undoubtedly solidified forever in Jarius’ mind the Deity of Jesus.

It was way more than he thought he signed up for, indeed.

I came to Italy with questions: “who am I supposed to become, where are You going with my life, am I supposed to be in Italy long-term…?” And He has responded in kind: “I AM. I exist, ponder that. I created you to be satisfied in Me, DO YOU TRUST THAT?”

“Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

Easier said than done.

Law school in the United States is done in the Socratic method. It’s not a series of lectures that teach us about the law, rather, it’s a series of courses designed to help us go find out what it is and apply it to our situations. It’s a serious of:

“This is what happened in the ___ case, according to the logic of the court, what would the outcome be if ___ circumstance were different?”

“What philosophic approach does the court take, and do you agree with it?”

“What if….”

Maybe it’s because I’ve been immersed in this for 2 years now, but I’m starting to see how this consistently happens in my relationship with God:

“God, should I do ____?”

“Well, what are your motives for wanting to do ____?”

“God, why did ____ happen?”

“Well, do you believe I am good?”

“But why does it hurt?”

“Where does it hurt?”

“You know where it hurts.”

“You tell me where it hurts, name it, and maybe we can go from there.”

….tears….

He keeps asking questions until I end up at conclusions that I never would have come to on my own. And you know what? It goes deeper every time He does that. It’s flat out a better education. And a better education comes with far greater reward, and satisfaction. I think Jarius would probably agree. And so would the woman who was given back her health and dignity in the middle of the street after crawling to touch Jesus’ dirty hem.

His ways are beyond me. Good thing they're better than mine too, because at this point I may have already packed my suitcases and headed back to the States by now. Something tells me to wait. I have to admit, it's not fear for me right now it's frustration. When I read this story and put my own circumstances in the narrative I can envision Jesus looking over a crowd of tourists in Rome, straight at me and saying: "I haven't forgotten, don't get frustrated, just believe."

Right now, I'm relating to Jarius in that few minutes walk between when Jesus said that and when they got to the little girl's bedroom. I can just imagine the internal war, the grief in that man's soul and I resonate. There are almost no words that satisfactorily express the disappointment and reverberating WHY. But I love that Keller's admonishment comes back to me: there will be an even more reverberating BECAUSE. The question then remains of how to handle the interim?

Not sure I know. One day at a time. And I'm headed to Naples on Friday--all of this solitude is wonderful, but I want to see some people now. ;)

(By the way, I would just like to take a moment and say, yes, I do realize that God came before Socrates.)