Things Made Well

Growing up in an oddball homeschooled family, I have a great love of well-made objects. I enjoyed seeing anything made really well out of leather, wood, whatever it might be. I got into historical sewing because I saw that I could perhaps make things well. I would not have been interested for the sake of costuming- I don't want it merely to look right, I want it to be the actual thing itself.

It is a little like Plato's ideals. I have always cared enormously about the actual thingness of a thing. The idea of it, the spirit of it, what it actually is, which is wrapped up in all of how to use it well, what it is really for, everything. And the variety of Things, and the variety of Things within a category of thing, is what makes life so very lovely. I got passionate about it when I was a living, breathing teenager, but since then my emotions have dulled.

There is nothing better than seeing a shoe (to get an example) that is made so well it isn't likely to fall apart unless you use it as it isn't intended to be used. Something made within an inch of its own death, made so well it will last, made of materials that won't go 'out of fashion', made in a style that won't go out of fashion, and so on. Something that lasts, that is useful, and is also beautifully made. Smooth, warm brown oiled leather, thick waxed linen thread, carved, shapely wooden heel (perhaps bound in leather)...

The characteristic I desire in everything I do is well-made-ness. The goal is always to head towards the beauty of perfection. We are here as stewards of this world to seek the best that we can do with all things. When we destroy, we create from it something new, something beautiful. Out of the ashes the phoenix is born. Out of our own darkness a great beauty is created; the birth of wisdom and experience. The well-made-ness is in every part of life. I seek it in every action I can do (when I am not being taken over in the style of The Screwtape Letters). And I must surrender myself to God's making me perfect... must surrender the control of keeping myself just the way I am, keeping myself in comfort and entertainment, in ease.

We only have freedom when we are completely, fully able to partake of creating out of the materials of this world (and ourselves; we are also stewards of ourselves). When we acknowledge we are stewards of this world in the way God made it and intended it to be, the ability to make things intensely beautiful is opened to us. We must look on the world as it is. This world is not cheap, not hastily thrown together. This world is a masterpiece (though broken and not as it should be now), and what we make in it ought to be a masterpiece as well.

It is hard for me to bear living now, when things are made so cheaply and to make things cheaply is not particularly minded. I have very high standards, and I'm not about to relax them. It is a good challenge to have on my head that I must try to do everything extremely well, and besides, I won't do it all well because I am an incredibly lazy person at heart. I really enjoy the strength of the challenge hanging over me, the sense that it gives me that I am really not all I crack myself up to be (because I am constantly cutting corners). It gives you a healthy sense of your own position in reality when you are not always managing what you intend to manage.

Thrill of Hope

If you sit in and picture the depravity of the Fall, the Thrill of Hope is possible. Our lives are good enough, comfortable enough, there are enough solutions to avoid the pain of the Fall for many of us here in the West, so we are immune to God's gift.

We avoid knowing about how broken things are, how painful things are- there has to be some solution, a comfort or an entertainment to numb our feelings, to numb our awareness to the brokenness of things.

We perhaps would like to live in a thrill, but we are never willing to get there through the right means. You can only get there through pain and sacrifice, the greatest pain of seeing we are unlovable, the greatest sacrifice of seeing we deserve nothing the way we are now. The pursuit of thrill, the pursuit of happiness, is all done with the humming sensation of 'I deserve it.' People even say that.

When I was a child, it might have been shocking to me that it would become so entirely normal to tell people and ourselves that 'we deserve a good life.' It is so painfully clear to me that I do not. How can people not see the darkness in themselves? To me the darkness in people is painfully obvious all the time. We are not good, and we never will be if we keep pretending we are- that is the worst fault!

First we die in our hearts, we die to our own ego, we die to any delusions of our own perfection and deserving, knowing we are base and ugly, broken beyond repair. Then, like the glimmer of spring creeping into Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it is possible to take in that Someone saves us from that darkness within ourselves; that we need not be Good. Someone is good for us.

A possibility for relief, a great sigh out, falling down out of the exhaustion of pretending you are something, falling into the soft, consoling arms of a Father, falling into the relief that we do not control or run reality... that Someone Else can run it far better than we can. We are mere creatures. The whole of the world is not our purview. We only are our purview, we and the little daily things we touch, the people we know.

Little stones that start an avalanche.

Love For No Reason

God's perfect love is a love that does not love us because of our characteristics, our credentials. He did not choose to love us after we became a worthwhile object; after we achieved some milestone in life. God does not love us because we can speak and communicate with Him, God does not love us because we crack a good joke. God loved while He thought of an idea of a person that was you, and then and there you were.

God chooses to love us, for no reason of our own making, for no status or identity we have, seemingly randomly, for no reason. Except that we are made by Him, as we are ‘made’ by our parents; the love and affection of that ‘unchosen’ relationship, and in God’s case that He is responsible for the very idea of ourselves- for inventing in His mind our character. There is no choice of anyone except the lover: God chose our character, chose our quirks, and thus He made us. His Perfect Thought invented us.

So no man may boast; no one of us is greater than another; (we are worthy for the same reason, we are special, for we are God’s creatures) no more worthy of God’s love for any reason imaginable except that we are God’s creation, His humans, creatures.

We may not make God love us any more than He already does because the righteousness of Christ is the perfection by which we could even love, and it is placed on us, like a film, a lens, if a lens could instead be applied to the object seen.

One cannot be more accepted than we already are- there is no more deserving we can achieve. It is simply not there.

No one truly deserves particular, special love (in the sense of a higher degree of love than other people deserve). We merely are taken with someone, and allow ourselves subconsciously to love the object.

Affection happens without our choosing, accidentally. In a sense, we should not confuse our affection with the object’s deserving.

Because in love we were conceived (in God's passionate interest in thinking out, for His pleasure, a person like each of us), we cannot earn love from God. He came up with the complete and perfect understanding of us when He thought of us. He knew us completely, because He made that Complete Self in all its facets, in all its quirks. You can do nothing to deserve more love than that Idea deserved when He thought of it.

And He loves the idea of you. He loves to think about the characteristics of you. You are interesting to Him, you are beautiful to Him like a wonderfully harmonised symphony. Your parts move in coordination, in a complex dance together; the parts balance each other, the facets play together like beautiful lights shining through a stained glass. You can be no more glorious than He pictured you when He first conceived the idea of you: He knew all your glory right then and there. And He let it out to play in this world. He wants to see you bounce off of reality, bounce off of others, because He thinks you will add a lovely element, shade, flavour to all the interactions you have with things and people.

You Want Control? Here is Fear.

I have been in denial that I am a creature of fear. I have tried to cope with the complex problems I invented by denying that I am afraid. I am even afraid to be afraid; I imagine that being afraid will trap me, which is true. But I feared to share my fear- I feared to seem weak. I do very much wish to seem strong. It is easy for me to keep that illusion when my life is much the same, from day to day, week to week, year to year. So safe from any crazy curve balls that could be thrown at me. And always I am looking at others to learn what curve balls may come my way, always seeing what I could come into contact with and mentally acquainting myself with those things so they cannot overwhelm me.

I will not drown. I will not be trapped. I can do this; I can do anything.

When I am most depressed, it's due to fear - the future is closed, I feel stuck. Trapped. All my limbs bound, things pressing in on me, stifling the air, suffocating me. The choices I wish to take are mere illusion... the future is dead; it can only ever go downhill. All that is darkest is most real. The only future I can see is one of problems here, and problems there, and that future is a stifling, dead, joyless, empty, dystopian thing.

I live constantly gearing up, alert, on the edge of my seat, eyes wide open, my mind fighting for certain outcomes, even in my dreams. I learn from others' experiences so I might have 'the best future,' never, it seems, merely for the fun of learning about others. Do I really care about other people? I highly doubt it, except in those blissful moments when God seems to have reached through me and is using my body and mind and heart to do His will in others' lives.

I know what hell I have made for myself, but if every single area of life is an area where things are not happening 'as they ought to,' it is hard, ever so hard, not to exert control over that part of your life. So hard not to wrap your mind around that thing and make yourself acquainted with the ins and outs of it, as your mind sees it, and make yourself bear the thing. Iron grip. Grasping, grasping, squeezing the thing to death- 'I will not let you do what I do not want; if you insist on doing it, I will make myself used to you. I will not be denied.'

I live in fear because I imagine I can control. It is not a free life. It is not what God would intend for any of us. He wishes us to be free of care because we trust in Him... I am clearly in no way trusting in Him. It seems that even by understanding this situation of control and fear, I am yet again controlling, and yet again afraid. I fear my own case of control because I also know what that will cause, so I wish to control it and prevent future control...

...by CONTROLLING.

God's Glory Frightens Us

Is our fear of God about His glory? 

Are we terrified of the expansiveness and greatness of His glory, His beauty? Are we terrified of encountering the True One, the only Person who is Perfect and True, the only One with integrity, the only One who is consistent, the only One who cannot lie, and to Whom all lies are the greatest affront? Are we terrified of seeing our depravity thrown naked by seeing the perfectness of Him? The contrast between Him and our state would humble us. 

We do not like really to be told we are wrong. It’s a little easier to bear being shown wrong by imperfect humans; there we have the gratification of knowing that they’re not all they’re cracked up to be, either- in them we see ourselves, which is perhaps one reason why when they show themselves better than we ourselves, we are resentful of it, and angry at ourselves- they shouldn’t be any better than we are. 

But when we are faced with the Perfect, we have no escape in judging that One, except in a rebellious, temperamental fit.

My Fight with Complexity

I have had a bit of a journey to deal with complexity for various reasons. I realised this example can serve as an introduction into how I look at life, how I navigate it. A big piece is self-control- I had to learn it or I was not going to be able to have what I wanted at all out of life. The question that was basically posed to me as a child was- do you want Life or do you want to be miserable in the future? The only way not to be miserable was self-control and self-denial. Meekness, which I wrote about earlier, relates to this, and why I posted that was because of how passionate I am about godly self-discipline.

I have found over time from others and myself that I can be rather vague in communication. Perhaps part of it was my automatic assumption that things are quite basic; that all in life boils down to simple things. It became evident in childhood that I had the tendency to leave out important information when I was figuring out how to do daily tasks best. Because I was made fun of for it, I made myself figure out how to deal with the complexity of life (also important when your family is intellectually-inclined and you want to be In On It). If I figured out how to manage the complexity, I would be able to explain myself better- I found I was often missing the mark in explaining myself. My ideas don't go away if other people disagree, unless they managed to disprove it.

So I realised, by the word of wise people and vicarious experience, that it's safest to view complexity as reality and to face it if you want to live with ease, be happy in the long run, and all that jazz. The road to simplicity has to go through complexity; a little syrup boils down from a lot of sap. 

I thought then, if I enter into and live in the metaphorical hurricane of so-much-conflicting-information, maybe one day it will feel like my feet are on solid ground- I will get used to the chaos. Picturing it somewhat like this was how I reconciled myself to putting myself through all the rigmarole I still do put myself through. I forced myself to 'enter the hurricane' as a child, putting one leaden foot in front of the other, and gained habit, momentum. I am fascinated by mind-numbing hard-core self-work since I think it is the only way to live better, wiser- it is the way to pave the future that I want.

I was not allowed to get away with any simplistic notions as a child. I want to hate that, but it's not worth hating reality (I know from what many wise people said, it doesn't make things easier). I decided quite young that I was going to, even if it was the last thing I did, love how things actually are, however hard it is. I just decided. I will keep asking if I am facing things, I will keep reassessing. The hardest things to do are also the most rewarding, even emotionally. I had some moments as a teenager of incredible euphoria, seeing how it all was working out, like a vision. Most of life is a drudge, full of impatience, but the only way to be truly happy is to do what has to be done, and eventually you become used to it, and it becomes life-giving.

To Ask for Help

I have found out gradually over the years that, though I very much want help, I will not ask for it.

I try to understand a problem first. I feel as if I should know first what is the whole of the problem and what is the solution before I go and ask for help- then I can articulate what I specifically need (I tell myself). But I never end up actually asking, and I know that when I do, I am bargaining and trying to make the other person give it to me. When you have spent days, months or even years thinking about a problem before you ask someone, there's going to be a lot of baggage built up on it and it will sound like a demand, however sweetly you frame it.

One thing I will have to work on is learning to ask God for things without determining beforehand all the answers. If I determine beforehand, I may never ask. Besides, I can feel like I never reach a conclusion (O woe!), always aware that there is something more I don't yet understand, something hiding just out of sight that I can sense.

It is very hard to ask anybody what I want before I know that I need it- it is a great concession. It is being vulnerable. It is hard for me to ask for something if I don't know that someone else should give it, and I don't even trust other people to determine that well. I don't really want to present to them, 'Could you help me with this?' instead of saying 'this is what I need,' because if I say the former, they will then get to decide for themselves, O horror, and they might disagree with me!

The best response if I truly wish to become closer to God is to give up all the layers of pretense and ego and say just what comes to my mind. But what if it's wrong! Oh, no! Good- you'll learn humility. Why is that so bad?