I was in the library about a week ago and I was walking through the numerous stacks of books. All categorized by topic thanks to the Dewey decimal system. I found my way to the religion section and started browsing. There were books about buddhism, taoism and some self help books.
While I was browsing, between the M's and the O's there was a bright orange book that caught my eye. I pulled it out, Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist. I opened the first page and was hooked. With that type of title and a bright orange cover....i was intrigued. This book is incredibly refreshing and has provided spot on wisdom about God, Christianity and the reality of living as a Christian. This passage is one of the most beautifully written things I have read in a long time.
"There is a way of living, a way of harmonizing and hitting a balance point, a converging of a thousand balance points and voices, layering together, twisting together and there are moments when it all clicks into place just for a split second-- God and marriage and forgiveness and something deep inside that feels like peace--and thats the place Im trying to get to.
i have glimpses every once in a while of this achingly beautiful way of living that comes from when the plates stop spinning and the masks fall off and the apologies come from the deepest places and so do the pryaers, and I am fighting, elbowing to make more of my life that life. I want that spirit or force of happiness that is so much deeper than happy--peace that comes from your toes, that makes you want to live forever, that makes you gulp back sobs because you remember so many moments of so much un-peace. I search for those moments the way I search for beach glass, bits of glitter along a desolate expanse of sand, and I want those moments to stretch into hours, into days.
The word I use for it is shalom. It is the physical, sense oriented, relational, communal, personal, ideological, posture that arches God ward. That's the best way I can describe it. It's an equilibrium and free fall, balance and shake. It's a new dance, a new taste, the feeling of failing in love, the knowledge of being set free. It's that split second cross between a fact and a feeling, something you would swear on in a court of law but couldn't find the words for it if you tried.
To get there, I am finding, is the hardest work and the most worthwhile fight. Shalom requires so much, so much more than I thought would have to sacrifice, and it scrapes so deeply through the lowest parts of me, divulging and demonstrating so many dark corners. Its something you can't fake, so you have to lay yourself open to it, wide open and vulnerable to what it might ask of you, what it might require you to give up, get over, get outside of, get free from. It feels, sometime, like running farther than you thought you could run, legs shaking and lungs burning, feeling proud and surprised at what little old you can do.
Shalom is about God, and about the voice and spirit of God blowing through and permeating all the dark corners that we've chopped off, locked down. It's about believing, and letting belief move you to forgive. It's about grace, and letting grace propel you into action. It's about the whole of our lives becoming woven through with the sacred spirit of God, through friendship and confession, through rest and motion, through marriage and silence.
Shalom is the act of life lifting up and becoming an act of worship and celebration, a sacrament, an offering. It's about living with purpose and sacrifice and intention, willing to be held to the highest, narrowest possible standard of goodness and in the same breath finding goodness where most people see nothing but dirt.
I have been surprised to find that I am given more life, more hope, more moments of buoyancy and redemption, the more I give up. The more I let go, do without, reduce, the more I feel rich. The more I let people be who they are instead of cramming them into what I need from them, the ore surprised I am by their beauty and depth. When we can manage to live this way of shalom, even for a moment, we pull each other up toward something bigger, wider, more beautiful, because left to my own devices, chances are, I will spiral down until life is nothing more than the mildew smell on my kitchen towels and the guilt I feel about all the things I thought I'd be.
The truest thing , it seems, is the biggest: the big idea of making a life with God, with honor, with honesty and community and beauty and the fragile delicate recipe of those, searching for the place where they all come together, where hope and struggle and beauty and tears swirl together into the best, brightest moments of life. That's what I believe about God.
I believe that life is a bottle rocket, a celebration, and it requires everything we have, and it demands that we battle through fear and resentment, and it demands that we release our need to be the best, the prettiest, the most perfect and together, because the big thing, the forceful beautiful thing is happening already, all around us and we might miss it if we're too busy meeting our parents' expectations or winning awards.
Shalom is happening all around us, but it never happens on its own. the best things never do happen on their won, and shalom is the very best thing. In the same way that forgiveness never feels natural until after it's done, and hope always feels impossible before we commit to it, in the same way that taking is easier than giving and giving in is easier that getting up, in that same way, shalom never happens on its own.
It happens when we do the hardest work, the most secret struggle, the most demanding truth telling. In those moments of ferocity and fight, peace is born. Shalom arrives and everything is new. And when you've tasted it, smelled it, fought for it, labored it into life, you'll give your soul to get a little more, and it is always worth it."
I want that! That tidbit of wisdom from the bright orange book is a fresh breath of air pushing me to go on a little more.
