Minesweeper

I didn't learn to play minesweeper until my senior year of high school.  Oh, I'd had a computer before then and thought that I'd been playing.  But one day in physics lab, a classmate opened a mindless grid and started clicking away, and I told him I hated that game.

It is impossible to win.

Because I hadn't read the rules; I'd just sort of tried to pick it up.  And I absolutely believed that all those little numbers that show up behind this or that square were points.  It wasn't counting my points anywhere, and some squares had no points, but that was the nature of the game.  You didn't know where the mines might be.  The goal was to get the highest score before you blew yourself up.  That was minesweeper.  

I wasn't very good.

My classmate explained that those numbers are not points.  After he stopped laughing at me and giving me this incredulous, sideways-headed look because after all, we were sitting in an Advanced Placement second-year physics lab.  You don't get in a place like that without some measure of brains.

The numbers, he said, tell you how many mines are adjacent to that square.  The goal, he said, is to clear every space that isn't a mine.  The goal, he said, is to not blow yourself up.

Here I was thinking the explosion was inevitable.

It's kind of easy to live life the way I used to play minesweeper.  Not having a rulebook, not knowing what the name of the game is, but just kind of clicking your way through and trying to rack up as many points as you can before, eventually, you blow yourself up.  Thinking there has to be a point tally somewhere, even if it's not showing for you.  Believing there's no way to know what's under the next square...or around the next corner.  Lamenting that this is impossible.  There's no way to win.

But there is a rulebook.  There is guiding information that tells us what this game is all about.  There is a set of directions for figuring out this grid we're on.

And what that rulebook tells us is this: the game is not blind.

You have to clue in to what's happening around you so that you gain some clues as to what's going on.  You have to look around, look up, stop for a second and think about where you are.  Is there a trap to your left?  An opportunity to your right?  And no matter where you look, you can't just settle for this mass of grey nothingness.  Behind every little section is something new, something to discover.  

The numbers in minesweeper are different colors.  Look at the colors all around you.  Look at the way your world is put together.  And make a move.  Because you don't get anything if you don't start clearing the board.

And yes, that means sometimes, you blow yourself up.  It means you take a miscue here and there and choose a wrong move now and then.

But it also means that sometimes, you blow this thing wide open.  Sometimes, you hit on something that takes away a whole grand space of nothingness and butts you right back up against an opportunity to make a new move.  You're either going to clear new space or you're going to blow something up.  Either way, you're poised to move.

There are no points in minesweeper.  There are no points in life.  Just the chance to start moving, to take notice of where you are and what lies before you, where opportunity sits in wait and where disaster is set like a trap.  It's a chance to chart a journey, to make it through, to clear the board.

Some days I sit and look at the board in front of me, and the opportunities and blessings God has designed just for me.  And I think how cool it would be to hit every one of them, to clear this board and live as fully as God created me to live.

I'm not scoring any points here, but I'm making a calculated move.  I think it's worth risking to blow this thing up if there's the good chance, too, that I'm about to blow this thing open.

The American Story

Last night, according to the popular vote, half of America rejoiced and half of America hung its head.  But the story of America is not in the numbers.  It's not in popular votes, electoral votes, congressional seats or any other numbers over which we are either rejoicing or grieving this morning.

America's story will not be told by the polls.  It will not be told by the President.  It will not be told by the legislature.  America's story, as much as it seems to the contrary, will be told in the streets.  And if we do this well, it is America who will tell our leadership's story.  As it should be.

Remember this guy named Herod?  Herod was a jerk.  There were a few Herods.  They were pretty much all jerks.  Herod, and then Herod, and then likely, Herod, had the authority and the obligation to govern their small section of the planet, and that was a reality their people had to live with.  But not, necessarily, live under.  The proof is in the story:

If you want to know anything about Herod's Judea, the details are told through a ragtag band of disciples, warring sects of Sadducees and Pharisees, the Sea of Galilee, and one Man - the Son of Man - whose refused to be subjected to the state and committed Himself to telling His own story.  Which became the disciples story.  Which became the temple's story.  Which became the Pharisees story.  Which became the people's story.  Which became Judea's story.  A story from the streets that defines that period in history.

Far beyond the legacy of Herod.

America owes a great debt to her leaders.  But she has not been defined by any of them, and she will not be defined by this one.  America has never been an enterprise that rises and falls by her leadership; America is a movement.

America is the place that people risk their lives to enter, not because they're looking for better leadership but because they are looking for a better story.  Nobody sneaks in on a cargo ship because Obama is better than Castro or Bush was better than Assad.  They're risking everything to get here because America...has a better story.

That story is the one we're telling on our streets.  It is our ingenuity.  Our adaptability.  Our integrity.  Our commitment and service and promise and hope.  It is our successes and our failures.  It is our opportunity.

And we have an opportunity now to continue to tell our story.  To take to our streets and live our lives and guide our decisions and make America happen.  What happened yesterday is of very little consequence.  This is our story.

There are certainly periods that history tells by leaders.  Hitler in Germany.  Napoleon in France.  Alexander the Great in Macedonia.  Julius Caesar in Rome.  Maybe even Osama bin Laden in al Qaeda.  But I don't think Obama in America is one of those stories.

America's story is told through ragtag bands of citizens, people of every nation, tribe, tongue, and creed.  People brought together by hope, which is more than a tagline in America, and by opportunity, promise, determination, and strength.  America's story is told not in shades of red and blue but in black and purple, the bruising of what it is to just be living it here.  To be on these streets, telling this story.

It doesn't much matter to me who's in the White House, though anyone who knows me knows I certainly have an opinion on last night's results.  But I'm telling my story.  And I hope you're telling your story.  And our neighbors are telling their stories.  And these stories are the stories of our families.  They become the stories of our towns.  The stories of our communities.  The stories of our states.  This is the story of our America.

Who's on First- or Second-Person?

One of the conundrums I continually run into while writing is which voice to assume.

I really admire writers who are able to incorporate personal stories and ideas seamlessly into their work in the first person.  Guys like John Eldredge, who is writing and talking and making his point, and then he just kind of pops this story in there - a story within a story - and switches over to the use of "I" and "me" and you barely even notice.  It just flows.

At the same time, you can't get stuck on the first person because at least in my genre, it's not memoir.  I don't write books about me; I write books about Love, as best as I can know Him and pray that somewhere in my words, you come to know Him, too.  Too much first person, and I feel like I'm getting in the way of the story I'm trying to tell.  I wouldn't want you to see too much of me.

On the other hand, every word I write is really a word I need to hear, and there are some days that if I don't put the "I" in there, at least while I'm drafting a chapter, the words I'm writing fly right past my heart on their way to my fingers, and then I feel like I'm writing the story but not doing a fantastic job of living it.

Still, though, I have to edit the I's out of the final copy because nobody wants to read letters I wrote to myself.  Not that I know of, anyway.

The second choice is second person, and that's to use whatever chance I get to write to "you."  You are, of course, the target audience.  These words are, in fact, what I'm hoping you will read and understand and invite into something you're doing.  It only makes sense to use the second person and generalize content to "you."

Or does it?  I don't know about you, but when someone is constantly talking to me (in second person), I feel kind of like they're lecturing.  I feel like they're talking down to me or at least talking across to me, and I'm a person who doesn't like to be talked to.  I prefer to be conversed with.  I prefer dialogue.

Then of course, there are those who use "you" and you feel like maybe they think they know better than you what your own life looks like.  You get the sense they feel far removed from the very things they're talking about, and you start to hear their voice in your head while you're reading (and you have a voice in your head while you're reading; we all do) like they think they're the expert.  Like they are generously trying to guide you through your own heart so you don't mess it up any further and by their great wisdom, they will do just that if "you" will listen to them.

There are a ton of books out there that claim to help you answer your life.  Those are not the kind of books that I write.  Because I don't have the answers.  A few, maybe, for me, but certainly none for you.  I'm not in your circumstances.  And when you start trying to generalize one answer to the answer, you leave a lot of wounded hearts in your wake, and I'm not willing to do that.  I write for the questions.  I write for the asking.  I write for the seeking, that maybe my readers won't be afraid to ask and won't be afraid to seek and will find somewhere the path that will point them toward their answers, which I can only pray is the Answer.

Thus, the second person isn't so simple as it seems.  We both know going into it that I, in the first person, am writing to you, in the second person, but if we get bogged down between you and I, that's just not the story.

Maybe the answer is we.  You and I.  Together.  There's certainly a place for that.

Actually, I love we.  I love the idea that in this story that we're building together (and that's how I see it), there's room for me, so that I get the message, too, and there's room for you, but you don't feel like you're all alone out there.  There's a we.  There's us - with the same questions, the same aches, the same longings, the same joys, the same sorrows, the same circumstances, the same life, the same world we're all living in.  There's a great place for we.

But then there's this: In some of my most pained, most honest, most seeking moments of my life, it's easy to read right past a "we" and think it doesn't apply to "me."  There are some words that have to be spoken straight to a heart so that those words are heard.  So that we hear them.

The best way to do that is with a "you."  Example:  God loves us.  Does that steady your trembling heart?  What if I tell you that God loves you.  That's the word.

And, of course, there are times that, if I'm ever able to do it as well as some of these guys I admire, I'd love to share a bit of my story with you, too.  Because truthfully, I can only speak for myself, and there are some incredible opportunities to put some skin on some things, and I have to do that with a "me" so that I can speak from a real experience.

So we're back to this again: I'm still learning the delicate balance of voice in my writing.  It's a little me.  It's a little you.  It's a whole lot Him.  There's a huge place for us.

Wheeeee?

The God Character

God has honored me with this incredible gift to share His story.  And in the past several months, He's been working on my heart and humbling me with the way that He is telling my story.

Somewhere in the middle is a very fine line that fully hinges on what I can only call "The God Character."

As a writer and someone burdened with sharing the unbelievable grace of God (among His many other fine qualities), God is a primary character in nearly everything I write.  I gauge my success, even my contentment with what I do, in part on how well I am able to bring the very heart of God into the pages and then off those same pages and into the heart of the reader.  If you're not seeing God in my writing, then I am doing something wrong.  And that bothers me.

This requires, however, that I play the God character very well.  It's crucial that to the best of my ability, when I'm playing the God character, I use the words that God would use.  I say the things that God would say.  I answer the way God would answer.  I love the way God would love.

You're thinking, ok.  This doesn't sound so hard.  You simply become God in order to cast His character into your stories.  

Not at all.  By which I mean, not at all.  

When you try to think like God would think, you start to think more highly of yourself than you ought to.  When you put yourselves in God's shoes to try to answer a question or a problem or a heart, you form that answer in the shape of your own words.  When you pretend to be the very God character you're trying to write about, you kind of suck God into your writing until whatever you pen is this conglomeration of you and God because when you suck Him in, you get this idea that your perspective, experience, storyframe, or whatever else you're working with will obviously only enhance whatever God's word would be in this situation.  You kind of turn the God character into a jumbled, impure mess of a deity that leaves people still wondering what God is all about.  These are lessons learned the hard way.  Trust me on that.

The key to the God character is to know the character of God.

It's not likely that I'm going to stumble onto the very words God would use to answer anybody.  Maybe on some off chance, for maybe one reader somewhere someday, I do, and that would be cool.  But it's by knowing His character - the nature of mercy, the mercy of grace, the gift of forgiveness, the love of creation, the creation of love - that I am able, hopefully, to find worthy words.

It is by knowing and seeing and understanding and living and loving the way He is working in my life and in the lives of those around me, the stories He's authoring and playing out before my very eyes (and in my very eyes), that I am able to understand, in whatever limited understanding I may ever have this side of Heaven, what is the character of God.

Then I take all that and this gift He's given me and the grace I feel as He's playing out my own story, and I do my best to find words for the God character that are truly in the character of God, then pray I get it right.

The problem is that as I continue to grow in my gift and am gifted by His grace and as I continue to do what this thing is that I do, I'm getting fairly good - or at least, fairly confident - in speaking for God.  This is that fine line I was talking about, and it is an important line for two equally significant reasons.

First, because as I mentioned before, I don't want the words of God coming out of my mouth.  That is, I don't want to taint His message by getting in the way.  It's a temptation I face with every word I write - to make sure you're hearing God and not Aidan.  To make sure that you, the reader, and I, when I read my own words, don't think I'm talking to you.  That you don't think I'm saying these things.  So that you don't get a high impression of me; you get a glimpse of something higher.  Even the words I hijack are His, and that's a line not to cross.

The second reason that's a significant line to draw is this: I need to hear from God.  There are words right now that I need to hear Him speak into my life.  And it's tough when it's easy to get comfortable speaking for God, because when my heart is thirsty and I'm crying out, I know (or at least, I think I know) what He's going to say and my inner dialogue has a "God" voice (like you have a mom voice or a husband voice or a kid voice when you're speaking as they would speak) and I can sort of almost hear what God would say to me, but it's me speaking for Him.  

There's a vital difference between knowing what God would say and hearing Him actually say it.  That's why I take such great care with the God character.  I want you not just to know what God would say, but to actually hear Him say it.  He's talking to you, even if it seems He's got my name on it.

He's talking to me, too.  And I really, really need to hear Him speak.

On Faith and Grace

Faith is the answer.  Or is it?  

It's easy to say "just have faith" when things are going terribly.  When times are tough, it's nice to say, "Just believe."  But I have to be honest: while faith gives me great hope for eternity, it's not a tremendous help today.  Them's the breaks.  And for awhile, I thought that meant my faith was broken.  I thought that meant I was doing faith right.  I wasn't getting out of this salvation agreement the full extent of God's faith clause.  Because I have rested on faith and it's not changing today.  It doesn't make this an easier place to love.

Enter Tenth Avenue North and a little song called Losing.

Oh, Father won't you forgive them?  They don't know what they've been doin'.

Oh, Father give me grace to forgive them.  Cuz I feel like the one losin'.

The word faith isn't in there.  But for the first several times I heard this song on my radio, I didn't know that.  For the first few weeks after hearing it, singing it around the house, I always sang faith, not grace.  Give me faith to forgive them, cuz I feel like the one losin'.

(This is a common problem for me, and I write a monthly column of Lyrical Lingo - words of worship we sing and don't know we're singing, words we get wrong, what we're missing when we don't dive into the words, and so on.  God has uniquely qualified me for this.)

I loved the music, but the words weren't doing anything for me.  It's not that I was thinking of a particular "them" or trying to find the peace in my life that would come from a particular forgiveness.  My problem was that word faith.  That very word that wasn't even in the lyrics.

Give me faith to forgive them.  Give me the confident assurance that if I forgive them, I'm not giving up on this whole thing and that it will somehow work out.  Give me the belief that if I forgive them, there's still justice.  Give me the faith that You, God, are taking care of this and that even if I choose not to take care of this, You will still take care of this and I will be satisfied with the outcome.

Faith, sometimes, is this thing we use to pass the buck.  To toss our problems onto God and wash our hands of them, throwing our cares to the wind and deciding that whatever happens, we're not going to be the ones to do it and it must be God's will or it wouldn't have happened.  Faith has become our fall-back, and I don't think it was meant to be.  I think that's why we're dissatisfied with faith.

Because we've been using this thing we call "faith" to disengage from our lives and make them someone else's problem.  Namely, God's problem.  Then we're stuck trying to make sense of the God we put our faith in and this mess of life still happens but we told Him we believed in Him, and so if we want to have faith, then this is it.  But this isn't all that great.  So what good is faith?

Then I heard the words again.  Give me grace to forgive them.

Grace, not faith.

Grace is an invitation to engage in your world.  It's an invitation to embrace your heart and your life and your mess.  Grace takes whatever the situation is and brings you to meet it.  That's what we need more of.

Faith sounds nice, but in this broken world, it's not enough.  At least, not for me.  I believe in God just about as much as I can possibly believe in God.  I rest on His promises and His presence and His gift just about as much as I can possibly rest on His promises and His presence and His gift.  I trust His wisdom just about as much as I can trust His wisdom.  But that does not change the reality of one broken thing in this whole world.  The answer to losing is not to believe in God more.

The answer to losing is meeting this world with grace.  It's embracing God, choosing love, extending mercy, offering forgiveness and abounding in grace.  Grace acknowledges the reality of things that suck, accepts the pain of things that hurt, thirsts for the mercy that heals, rejoices in the majesty of untarnished beauty, swallows a hard pill of forgiveness, chokes down the even harder pill of needing forgiven, and embraces the fullness of life as we know it in the light of God's amazing grace, which gives us the strength to extend our own.  It doesn't cast this world aside with a trite, "God is the answer.  Just have faith."  No.  Grace draws God down and determines to be His answer - that is, His love - in the flesh.

To the words of the song, if I have faith to forgive them, I'm passing my vengeance over to God.  But if I have grace, I engage with my woundedness, take responsibility for both my hurt and my response, think and reflect and pray over what such things as my faith would tell me is best, what wisdom comes from faith and from having received mercy, and then...I choose love.  That is grace.  Grace is the invitation to stop waiting on things to work out and start working them out.  In love.  By faith.

It's easy to think the answer is faith.  That if we just have faith, just believe a little more, things will be ok.  But I think the real answer - at least, the answer to this place - is grace.

(Losing by Tenth Avenue North is available pretty much everywhere, as is their CD The Struggle.    The song is also on frequent replay on public Christian radio stations K-Love and AirOne, to name a few.  They have most recently been featured on my Christmas list.  Tenth Avenue North has not given me anything for the promotion of their work; they likely are not aware that I, in particular, exist.  But I thank them for inspiring these thoughts on faith and grace, as well as many nights of embarrassingly loud shower singing and awkward moments of stoplight worship where the drivers in the other cars have no idea what I'm singing so passionately about.  It's grace, folks.  That's what it is.)