Gravity

The following is taken from Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz (Romance Chapter beginning on p. 147). My friend Amber was talking about it this week and challenged me to read it, so I did. I read it three times. I think it is an extremely interesting quote:

What great gravity is this that drew my soul toward yours? What great force, that though I went falsely, went kicking, went diguising myself to earn your love, also disguised, to earn your keeping, your resting, your staying your will fleshed into mine, rasped by a slowly revealed truth, the barter of my soul, the soul that I fear, the soul that I loathe, the soul that: if you will love, I will love. I will redeem you, if you will redeem me? Is this our purpose, you and I together to pacify each other, to lead each other toward the lie that we are good, that we are noble, that we need not redemption, save the one that you and I invented of our own clay?

I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I went looking, I wrote out a list, I drew an image, I bled a poem of you. You were pretty, and my friends believed I was worthy of you. You were clever, but I was smarter, perhaps the only smarter, the only one able to lead you. You see, love, I did not love you, I loved me. And you were only a tool that I used to fix myself, to fool myself, to redeem myself. And though I have taught you to lay your lily hand in mine, I walk alone, for I cannot talk to you, lest you talk it back to me, lest I believe that I am not worthy, not deserving, not redeemed.

I want desperately for you to be my friend. But you are not my friend; you have slid up warmly to the man I wanted to be, and I was your Jesus and, you were mine. Should I show you who I am, we may crumble. I am not scared of you my love, my love, I am scared of me.

I want to be know and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely like me. My love, do I know you? What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we be forever fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other? Is this God’s way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conclude one great hope, plodding and sighing and beathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion?

We were fools to believe that we would redeem each other.

Were I some sleeping Adam, to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk you through the garden, to counsel your timid steps, your bewildered eye, your heart to slow to love, so careful to love, so sheepish that I stepped up my aim and became a man. Is this what God intended? That though He made you from my rib, it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in so doing revealing Him.

Will we be in ashes before we are one?

What great gravity is this that drew my heart toward yours? What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state? What is this that wants in me the want in you? Don’t we go at each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues? This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other!

I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away.

I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God’s own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.

I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.

God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.

I wonder if all of us are scared that others will see the real "me" and not care or not love us anymore. I know that fear is real for me. I hate that being "real" is sometimes the hardest thing you can do. Sometimes it is so much easier to pretend to be someone else (both in friendships and in relationships). But that is where I love this quote because at the end of the day I think we all have a desire to protect ourselves but we also have a desire to be really known by someone... And at some point that desire to be known has to win out... Because if not we cannot experience love the way God intended.

This passage reminded me of a Matt Chandler Sermon from May 22, 2005:

The Hebrews didn’t just see love and sex, it was a complex structure based on three words (I only quoted the part about the first 2, feel free to follow the link above and see the full sermon).

The first Hebrew word is raw-ah. Raw-aw is the Hebrew word for companionship. When I think companion, I think about a dog, but that is not rayah. The Hebrew word carries with it this implication; that I have seen in you both good and bad and I’m still willing to walk with you. This is the foundational element of Hebrew love. You cannot have love without raw-ah. Raw-aw can be for a man or a woman but not an inanimate object or animal. So a Hebrew couldn’t love a house or a camel, it wouldn’t make sense. Raw-aw never takes place on a first date because every man can at least pull off one good one; we can put on the cologne, we can iron the nice t-shirt. But rayah does not occur when all is well, it is a decision that takes place the first time you see the dark side. It takes place at the point when you see the bad and choose to walk away or say I’ve seen this about you but I’m here anyway, when you decide to keep going even those there are some things you don’t like. For some of us that happens at 6 weeks, for others 9 months. Unfortunately for some of us that happens after we get married. But some try to hide who they really are and bring a great deal of pain upon themselves. I know its dangerous to throw yourself out there, to say this is who I am, here’s my weaknesses, here’s my strengths. Because what if someone says I can’t live with that, it’s a scary deal. Nobody loves rejection and that’s why we hide from others. But without this foundation of raw-aw, love goes no further.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 5, verse 16, "His mouth is full of sweetness And he is wholly desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." Raw-aw leads into ahabah which is a “love of the will”. Ahabah is that there is no place I’d rather be than right here, right now with you. We like to make that sound really romantic, but ahavah is not about romance, it’s more like your hiding behind the couch while your spouse is throwing things at you trying to kill you. Now with that picture in your mind imagine “that there is no place I’d rather be than right here, right now with you”. Ahabah says, “I’m not going anywhere!” No matter how crazy you are, not matter what issues we have to work through, I’m not going anywhere.

I think it is funny because to be truly known by another person is my biggest fear and my highest goal in life. Though it is only a fear if that person rejects who I am. The joy comes when you show a person your insanity and they accept you for it (or with it).

Regardless of my relationships with people, I take joy in the fact that my Lord knows me inside and out and He will not turn away. God is not going anywhere! But man do I hope to one day understand (on some level) the gravity that drew Him unto us!