Reduce, Reuse, Repost?

 "Remember–the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker." - Madeleine L'Engle

I find it a little ironic that today is Earth Day, and here I am entering the virtual blogosphere, this crazy world that is the opposite of earthly wild. No smell of moss and pine here. This soapbox creature lets everyone speak their mind, even if they really have nothing valuable to say.  I'm not entirely sure I have a reason, other than that I love to write about things I'm passionate about, like many of you who do the same. I'm not doing it because I have something enlightening to reveal to the world that isn't already being said. I'm doing it because I feel compelled to take the time to articulate my thoughts, particularly about my faith, in a way that is a little less obnoxious than posting on FB where it will surely start a war among the masses in as little as 10 minutes. Yes, I've been known to do this a time or two-hundred.

I am passionate about my faith. I have become a question-asker. This is often not well-received as I grew up in primarily your typical conservative evangelical Christian home, and many of my friends and family maintain those beliefs. While I deeply love and follow the Jesus who walked this earth, I don't always love or recognize the Jesus that Christians display so loudly. Reality is that I don't put my trust in other Christians. I put my trust and hope in Jesus himself, who points straight to our Creator God. I read of Jesus answering questions with parables and following them with deeper questions, and I have come to believe that questions are sacred. It's not God who is afraid of our questions, but it is us who often are afraid of the answers.

I call myself a universe-disturber, a L'Engle term, which is more than a bit presumptuous, but that means a few things to me. First, I believe we are all connected- all people, all of creation, the apple trees and galaxies and sparrows and bumblebees...all dependent on each other, nothing acting just on its own but intertwined and deeply relational. A monarch flaps its wings and affects galaxies a million light years away. Each cell in my body responds and changes to energy and emotion in ways scientists are just beginning to understand. This absolutely astounds me, and while I am no scientist, I have a budding fascination with how this world works. Many of us grow up to face a difficult, yet completely unnecessary choice between our faith and intellectual honesty. People have abandoned their faith over this misconception. I am here to hopefully help make a space for these conversations that I also desperately crave.

My favorite author, Madeleine L'Engle, also says that "universe-disturbers make waves, rock boats, upset establishments. Jesus was a great universe-disturber, so upsetting to the establishment of his day that they put him on a cross, hoping to finish him off. Those of us who try to follow his Way have a choice, either to go with him as universe-disturbers (butterflies), or to play it safe and resist change." Unwavering beliefs may seem like security, but if we cannot move with change, we are closer to death and further from life. And real, meaningful, passionate life is what we are all after! So not only are we all ultimately universe-disturbers in being connected to one another, but I aspire to be a universe-disturber, one who follows in the difficult steps of Jesus of Nazareth.

So here I am. Questions, doubts, weaknesses, all bound up with splashes of hope and peace, and on my best days, a mustard-seed-sized faith and trust in the Maker of this Earth we're celebrating today. There is much in this life that seems meaningless. And then, just when I'm about to give in to this reckless chaos, some glimpse is given which reveals the strange weaving of purposefulness and beauty. Because I know that what God creates, God will not abandon.