CrashBurnBeauty

The world sits at the feet of Christ, 

Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled,

It yet shall touch his garment's fold,

And feel the heavenly Alchemist

Transform its very ashes to gold. Whittier

I took some artistic license and changed dust to ashes.... 

My title of CrashBurnBeauty is equivalent to TLC's CrazySexyCool.  Don't know much about TLC. Don't care to know much about TLC. I am not CrazySexyCool. OK, maybe a little crazy.

Like Nehemiah of the Old Testament rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, I am dedicating July to rebuilding and restoring my townhouse and property. Not quite as labor intensive as Nehemiah's work. I had lived in the townhouse before getting married and have been back for a couple of years since the divorce. That was an 10 year cycle in total. While I was married, in school, and working, I rented the townhouse out. That was an enterprise that was hardly worth the hassle in terms of economic benefits. Not all tenants are exactly upstanding.

It was good though that the townhouse was still in my possession because it proved to a lifesaver in some rough seas. I had a place to come back to where I didn't have to make decisions with lasting implications like debt, neighborhood, etc. The townhouse shoe fit although it was quite difficult to put the shoe back on at the time. Sometimes you have to go home again. No other rational choice.

Although I was a good landlord, I didn't exactly stay on top of some issues with the townhouse. Benign neglect. Nothing slummy like broken toilets and leaking roofs but stuff like the fence slowly decaying and not doing a whole lot about it. My current project, after restoring the fencing, was tearing out the old patio garden wood (above pic). It was rotten, slug infested, and gross. I had also placed a plyboard sheet on top of the patio garden years ago to create a platform for the garbage cans. The plywood, likewise, was decrepit. The patio garden was something that I didn't want to deal with but finally after 2.5 years of knowing that I had to tear it out, I got to it.

The wood had the dampness of drenched wood from a shipwreck. I knew it would be hard to burn. Yesterday, I got the fire pit stoked with about a whole container of lighter fluid and a 50 pound bag of dry wood pellets. Almost everything eventually burned except for a couple of scraps of the plywood. I have to let it dry more like jerky. All that remains otherwise is less than 16 ounces of ashes in the fire pit.

The wood burning got me thinking about the ashes of artistry. I have been hanging out with creative people this summer either at cafes drinking coffee or sipping beers at craft brew places. These are friends who have put themselves out there on the ragged edge of innovation/ministry and have gotten kinda burnt for it through the apathy and inattention of others. I feel that way about my book. Wet wood words.

Since most of my close friends are Christians, there have been some common themes. They want to serve God and help people. Their motives are relatively pure; None of us are free from the sinews of ego but on the whole their enterprises have a strong altruistic and ethical element. They are also talented, not "Christian kiddie-pool inbred grade on the Church curve" talented but are recognized as talented by non-believers also. They have sacrificed much to do the work they have felt called to by God.

And that is the rub: "Felt Called." A lack of success, at least the type that typically quantifies success, monetary income, audience attendance, have not been high tide but more like a medium to low ebb. It makes them and me wonder if we got off-track somewhere, were not listening to God.

Here are a couple of truisms about life:

- Your sin will find you out. If we do wrong, the chances are that the consequences will catch up with us. None of the creatives I know have deep addictions/sins to porn, gambling, alcohol, or other self-destructive patterns. Sure, none of us are perfect but there are individuals who make chronically poor decisions and get consumed in the process. Such people can be Christians yet they have strayed beyond the fold and have found themselves running and being overtaken by wolves. Not the case with my friends as far as I know and I know them well. We are honest with each other. It doesn't mean we know all of the details about each of our lives. I just know them well-enough and seen them in action long-enough to know that they are endeavoring to be the people that God wants them to be.

- However, the converse is not true. Our good may not find us out on this earth. We can be doing the right things the right ways and still suffer as if we have done wrong and danced with the Devil. Oswald Chambers's wife compiled a book of his lectures on  Job called "Baffled to Fight Better: Job and the Problem of Suffering." The book in unnervingly honest about the tragedy of life. Check out some of the titles for his chapters: The Passion of Pessimism, The Light That Failed, The Interrogative Plaster (?), Ponderosity, The Bitterest Hurt in Life, The Primal Clash. The Bitterest Hurt in Life is about the betrayal of close friends and comrades. Like Job's friends, those that we though had our back only to stab it. Their friendship provided intimate access. On a deep level, we wonder if God is actively trying to defriend us in the midst of our trials and tribs. HE seems to be the Theistic Frenemy. We  search for where we went wrong and nothing materializes.

This is no joke but one of the hardest things a person can experience. Feeling forsaken by God when trying to do right. To get the backhand of life when a pat on the back and a hug is more seemingly in order. Like Job, I have no answer for this. Instead, I have come to accept that life in this world is just a tragedy. Not that it couldn't be worse but The Fall is real and empirical. There are also many blessings. Yet, God may send us into a battle where by any measure it looks like we lost. All that is left are ashes.  Health and Wealth is Ill and Nil. Our Heavenly Father seems abusive at worst and inattentive at best. I know a lot of Christians are afraid to ask these questions, to think these thoughts, to feel these feelings. Instead, we bury them but they are never far from resurfacing when a fresh helping of pain is served up piping hot. Boil overs, Grease Fires.

I got turned onto a musician this morning by NPR by the name of Jason Isbell. He has a song called "24 Frames" where a catching lyric says something to the effect: "You thought God was an architect but now you know He is something like a pipe-bomb ready to blow, and everything you built that's all for show, goes up in flames, in 24 Frames."  

When my buddy and I talked about these things last night, he said something along the lines that God wants us. He doesn't want our goals, our plans, or even our work for Him. He wants us. And if He has to turn everything else into ashes to get us to let go of this rotted wood in a broken garden porch world for His beauty, He will.