Doing the Dance

Monday 4/23/18 4:11 AM

Two nights ago, I had a dream in which I saw my gravestone with the epitaph, “Mark Hugen, Warrior for Justice and Integrity.” Saturday night I had a dream in which I was very awkwardly fighting against racial injustice. Last night I remember no dream about injustice, but I opened my devotional book to a new week this morning where the theme is commitment, and my assigned psalm is Psalm 101. Imagine my surprise when the first two verses I read from the psalm were, “I will sing of your love and justice; to you, Lord, I will sing praise. I will be careful to lead a blameless life – when will you come to me? I will conduct the affairs of my house with a blameless heart.” The two verses are about justice and integrity.

My other assigned scripture was Mark 10:17-31, the story of the rich young ruler who asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and follow him. It says the young man left with a downcast face, unwilling to pay that price. My readings also included and excerpt from Clinging – The Experience of Prayer, by Emilie Griffin. She writes about abandonment to God, that selling of everything to which Jesus was referring in his conversation with the rich young ruler. “This abandonment is the very heart and essence of Christian prayer, and it has nothing in common with strategy and second-guessing. It is the pray-to-win mentality turned inside out, and yet it is not a pray-to-lose mentality. It is the prayer that has moved beyond intending, directing, steering, second-guessing God it is the dancer moving completely in the rhythm of the partner, prayer that is utterly freeing because it is completely at one. Utterly beyond asking, beyond the anger that rattles heaven’s gate. Prayer that does not plead, wants nothing for itself but what God wants, … able to act with a semblance of coherence and freedom even when completely surrendered to and possessed by the loving will of God.”

This image of dancing with God, following his lead with no agenda for myself or strategy is what I want. The closest I’ve ever come to that is when I handed in my resignation to Valley Christian without having a job at Cerritos College yet. During that time, I had a great deal of peace and contentment even though I was jobless. I was literally waiting for God to show me where to go and what to do. I’m not exactly sure how to experience that same kind of contentment with this issue of righting injustice in the world. I feel like making plans for a specific ministry is the equivalent of trying to second-guess what God is doing or trying to direct or steer a ministry in the direction I want it to go. I need to become so attached to God and in tune with his will that, like a dancer, I feel the pressure of his hand on my back steering me in the direction he would have me go and then feel the leading of my hand in his and the gentle nudging of his shoulder against mine, so I can follow his choreography as we dance together bringing his kingdom to fruition.

A Marvelous World

Saturday 4/7/18 6:30 AM

Last night Jaci and I went out for dinner. We were driving west as we returned home, and the sun painted cloud bellies various shades of yellow, orange, pink, and purple despite the fact that it was already below the horizon. Silhouettes of trees, the smells of spring, and the sounds of singing birds attacked my senses as I drove with open windows. I commented to Jaci what a marvelous world it is in which we are privileged to live. It is almost as if God is trying to overload our senses with amazing sights, sounds, and aromas just to show how much he loves us.

Today I read my psalm for the week, Psalm 23, complete with its images of green pastures, quiet waters, refreshed souls, prepared tables, and overflowing cups. My thoughts harkened back to our drive home last night and I stopped to thank God for this marvelous world. I also read these words from The House of the Soul and Concerning the Inner Life, by Evelyn Underhill. “Consider that wonderful world of life in which you are placed, and observe that its great rhythms of birth, growth and death – all the things that really matter – are not in your control. That unhurried process will go forward in its stately beauty, little affected by your anxious fuss. Find out, then, where your treasure really is. Discern substance from accident. Don’t confuse your meals with your life, and your clothes with your body. Don’t lose your head over what perishes. Nearly everything does perish: so face the facts, don’t rush after the transient and unreal. Maintain your soul in tranquil dependence on God; don’t worry; don’t mistake what you possess for what you are. Accumulating things is useless.”

Over the course of the past couple of months I have been considering my retirement from teaching, which will more than likely happen within five or six years, the Lord willing. I look at my investments and pensions and wonder if I will have enough to live. Underhill’s words and the evidence of God’s care for this world that pummels my senses should be enough to convince me to sit back, relax, and trust God to provide. The real question, of course, is will I be convinced by the evidence or not?

Tradition

Friday 3/30/18 4:51 AM

Next Friday a colleague and I are leading a workshop about using Desmos, an online graphing utility, in the classroom to enhance teaching. When I first began teaching I didn’t even have a calculator, let alone all of the powerful technologies available today. I have always tried to stay up to date with new technologies and I have tried to embrace new things and incorporate them into my teaching. Trying to think of new, creative ways to teach is one of the things I love most about my job. However, as I age, the rate at which technology is changing seems to be faster than the rate at which I can learn it. Sometimes doing things the old way is easier and entails much less work.

My devotional theme for the week is liberty, and a quote by Thomas Merton in his book New Seeds of Contemplation caught my attention this morning. “The mind that is the prisoner of conventional ideas, and the will that is the captive of its own desire cannot accept the seeds of an unfamiliar truth and a supernatural desire. For how can I receive the seeds of freedom if I am in love with slavery and how can I cherish the desire of God if I am filled with another and an opposite desire?”

My first thought was my teaching and how being prisoner to conventional ways of teaching stifles any kind of creativity. I can never learn new, or better ways of teaching a concept if I am unwilling to experiment with the unfamiliar. Of course, experimenting with the unfamiliar also brings with it the possibility of failure and I have to embrace the option of failure if I am to experience the thrill of success.

Merton suggests that my relationship with God can also get stuck if I am a prisoner to my own desires. He writes, “I must learn therefore to let go of the familiar and the usual and consent to what is new and unknown to me. I must learn to ‘leave myself’ in order to find myself by yielding to the love of God. If I were looking for God, every event and every moment would sow, in my will, grains of his life that would spring up one day in a tremendous harvest.”

Lately I have had an uneasiness, a feeling that God is calling me to something different. I do not know specifically what it is, but I have been troubled by the racial injustice that is experienced by many of my current and former students. I want to do something to address the systemic problem of racial inequality in our society but have no idea where to begin. I need to look for God in every part of my life and remain open to the new, and possibly crazy ideas that pop into my head. Who knows, maybe I can be an agent of change.