Techies 37: Generating Energy From Poop and much more

Engineers at Stanford University have devised a new way to generate electricity from sewage using naturally-occurring “wired microbes” as mini power plants, producing electricity as they digest plant and animal waste.

In a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-authors Yi Cui, a materials scientist, Craig Criddle, an environmental engineer, and Xing Xie, an interdisciplinary fellow, call their invention a microbial battery.
One day they hope it will be used in places such as sewage treatment plants, or to break down organic pollutants in the “dead zones” of lakes and coastal waters where fertilizer runoff and other organic waste can deplete oxygen levels and suffocate marine life.
At the moment, however, their laboratory prototype is about the size of a D-cell battery and looks like a chemistry experiment, with two electrodes, one positive, the other negative, plunged into a bottle of wastewater.
Inside that murky vial, attached to the negative electrode like barnacles to a ship’s hull, an unusual type of bacteria feast on particles of organic waste and produce electricity that is captured by the battery’s positive electrode.
"We call it fishing for electrons," said Criddle, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
The tubular growth depicted here is a type of microbe that can produce electricity. Its wire-like tendrils are attached to a carbon filament. This image is taken with a scanning electron microscope. More than 100 of these "exoelectrogenic microbes" could fit side by side in a human hair.  (Xing Xie, Stanford Engineering)
Scientists have long known of the existence of what they call exoelectrogenic microbes – organisms that evolved in airless environments and developed the ability to react with oxide minerals rather than breathe oxygen as we do to convert organic nutrients into biological fuel.
During the past dozen years or so, several research groups have tried various ways to use these microbes as bio-generators, but tapping this energy efficiently has proven challenging.
What is new about the microbial battery is a simple yet efficient design that puts these exoelectrogenic bacteria to work.
At the battery's negative electrode, colonies of wired microbes cling to carbon filaments that serve as efficient electrical conductors. Using a scanning electron microscope, the Stanford team captured images of these microbes attaching milky tendrils to the carbon filaments.
"You can see that the microbes make nanowires to dump off their excess electrons," Criddle said. To put the images into perspective, about 100 of these microbes could fit, side by side, in the width of a human hair.

Self Regenerating polymer

Researchers at IK4-CIDETEC have created a polymer capable of self-repairing at room temperature without the need of any catalysts or any external stimulus. After being cut in half, the material is able to regenerate itself in just two hours, fully recovering its mechanical properties. 

This new polymer is based on a poly(urea-urethane) type composition, a material which is widely used in industry. Therefore, and because it can be easily scaled-up, this new development is expected to reach the markets shortly. Its discovery opens a wide range of industrial applications in the use plastic components, in both electrical and automotive sectors, as well as in construction and in the development of biomaterials.

The work, which was published in the journal Materials Horizons from the Royal Society of Chemistry, was developed in the framework of the SHINE European project, where IK4-CIDETEC participates as a partner in a consortium of various European companies, research centres and universities.

IK4-CIDETEC plans to continue working in this field, with the aim of developing harder self-repairing materials through the incorporation of reinforcements or the use of other technologies.

Techies 36: Sprayable Energy, Cleaning Robo Flies..?? :O

1.) Flying Cleaners

Mab is an automated cleaning system consisting of hundreds of mini-robots who will clean all surfaces giving magic to daily activities

Mab users are people who are always busy, their work is their passion and time governed their lives. Some users work from home and others spend all day at your workplace. These users do not have the time available to perform housekeeping activities and not want to do this activity. His life is too fast, always connected with the world and with your work anywhere. Although they love their work, they need free time, leisure time to do what they want and what makes them happy, time for reflection and to share with family and friends.

Mab only requires a brief initial setup and works independently.
When you turn to MAB, will welcome you and will locate its global position, determining the language spoken in the region, if the preferred language is not correct, you can select another language fingering the flag of the language you want or well saluting in their language through speech recognition.
Then MAB presents a menu of 5 steps you will take to configure the system and allow you to work independently.
1. Energy: the system requests an initial energy charge. Mab has 3 ways to acquire energy.
• First attempt to detect network "Witricity" (WiTricity is a wireless transfer mode resonance energy)
• If the previous network is not available, MAB request install wireless charging system to connect to the power supply. This system will use it only for the initial load or in case you are in a region with little access to solar energy.
• The third mode of energy supply is the ideal means by which gets energy constantly. Capture solar energy through the wings of micro-robots.
2. Load the cleaning substance: Mab requires water and a chemical substance that gives disinfectant properties, pleasant smell and viscosity to trap dirt particles. MAB indicates where they inserted the components encapsulated, intermittently illuminating your location. Then MAB will take care of homogenizing and mix the components.
3. Scan the space: Mab will scan the home using the microrobots flight , determining the cleaning time in different madalidades: Fast, Normal or exhaustive, will also determine the areas in which the house is divided to run custom cleanings.
4. Schedule cleaning cycles: with scan data, Mab recommend a weekly cleaning cycle and indicate the consumption of resources with the programmed cycle. The cycles are scheduled for days, times and thoroughness of cleaning. You can also run custom cleaning in areas that Mab has divided the house.
5. Connectivity and Notification: MAB detected devices and networks to which it can connect to, such as home automation networks, computers and cell phones, to report on their performance and problems or for receiving commands from these devices.
Now MAB will work autonomously. Enjoy a magical cleaning!

 

2.) Sprayable Energy

Techies 35: Upcoming Cars

Well August has been a great month for Cars in customers in INDIA. We got A class mercedes, ECOSPORT and many more. But for this upcoming months, things are getting pretty insane for hatchback section, lets see how:-

1.) Hyundai Grand i10( Diesel)-Expected in first week of September. Hyundai has unveiled the next generation hatchback for India, christened as the Grand i10. The new model will be built in India and will also be exported to the European markets, where it is expected to debut at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show. Hyundai has released the first images of the car along with a confirmation that this model will be powered by an all-new diesel engine.
he all-new Grand i10 follows Hyundai’s fluidic design philosophy. The front of the car is dominated by a standard hexagonal grille and well sculpted headlamps that resemble the design of the i20. The fog lamps are big with bold black surrounds adding more aggression to the fascia. The Hyundai Grand i10 resembles the current i10 from the side, but it is noticeably wider, longer and taller than the current model. This car has side moldings – but these are not standard puny strips, but shapely wide black belts that add character to the car along with roof rails. The rear of the Hyundai Grand i10 looks like a shrunk version of the i20 and the overall design makes it evident that the car will slot in between the current Korean hatchback siblings – the i10 and the i20.

2.) BMW 1 series(Petrol and Diesel) - Expected in first week of September. Expected price range would be same as of Mercedes A class.
The most important factor that differentiates the 1 Series from the Mercedes and Audi entry-level models is that it is a rear-wheel-drive. BMW cars are known for their drivability and this hatchback won’t be any different. But there is a hind side to the great handling dynamics – the longitudinal engine takes up lot of space and that also compromises the space in cabin and mainly the comfort of rear passengers.
The 1-Series is loaded with features from one segment above – it gets parking assist, lane departure and collision warning, cruise control, smart phone and music player integration with Facebook and Twitter apps,OptionaliDrive and BMW ConnectedDrive. It remains to be seen how many of those features make it to the Indian market.

 3.)Nissan Terrano- Expected in October.

The Terrano is the Nissan’s version of the Renault Duster. The Franco-Japanese alliance share more than just the facility in India and this is yet another product from Chennai with simple badge engineering.
The Terrano will share more than a few components with its French sibling.  It will be based on the same platform as the Duster, it will offer same engine / transmission options, will have very similar dimensions and cabin space, same wheel size and possibly exact same interior trims.
Nissan has concentrated mainly on the looks of the new compact SUV to distinguish it from the Renault’s product. The sole sketch released by Nissan show that the Terrano is more edgy with a sharper front features. The side profile also has bold lines but unlike Duster’s these don’t curve and are angular. The flared wheel-arches make the Terrano look aggressive, distinguishing it from most of Nissan’s models in India.
The Nissan Terrano will be powered by the same 1.5-litre dCi engine that powers the Duster. Like the Duster it will available in two different grades – the 85bhp base variant and 110bhp for the top spec version. There might also be a petrol version powered by the same 1.6-litre four-cylinder unit churing out 102bhp and 145Nm of torque.
Utility Vehicles have seen lot of success in India, but India is a very price sensitive market and lot depends upon the tag price. Generally Nissan products are positioned below the French models, so badge engineering has been easier for models like the Micra – Pulse and the Sunny – Scala. However, there is a term in the Nissan-Renault contract that states that the new vehicle has to be positioned higher than the donor car. This means that the Terrano will be position above the Duster, which in itself carries a fairly steep price tag.
The starting price of the petrol Terrano is expected to be around Rs 8.25 lakh, while the top-end diesel version will cost close to Rs 12.75 lakh. Here however, Nissan has an opportunity to better the Renault model – the Duster fairs poorly on interior quality and features list. For the additional price, the Japanese manufacturer can improve on both these fronts and can actually improve on what is already a brilliant product.

READERS's SPECIAL

CIVIL ENGINEERING AND WOMEN 

By Payal Gupta

Civil engineering is basically the male dominant field. The place traditionally meant for males. But this does not abolish the dreams and fascination of a girl towards the skillful constructions of dams and bridges..


Many people give their pity advices at the time of admissions of would-be-civil engineer girls that it may pose great difficulties to their future lives because of the difficult site terrain. But this isn’t it..civil engineering is not limited to  only on-site work, it also involves office jobs such as analysis,estimation,designing,

arbitration,tendering and many other desk jobs. Among the other engineering careers, civil is the one of the broadest field.
It also offers huge growth opportunities due to rapid urbanization.

Girls have a huge opportunity waiting in the civil engineering field. All they need is determination to work in the challenging field.
Speaking about the benefits of working in the public sector, there is a lot of scope in the areas like infrastructure, development, maintenance and repairs, permission and control, vigilance and quality control, design and planning and non-conventional technology application.


Advancement in technology and introduction of new software is making it easy for women to build a career in civil engineering, there are opportunities galore and the percentage of women in this field is on the rise.
Above all, the challenging spirit of women to the most to most difficult job options is now breaking the walls that were once the obstacles between them and their dreams.
Thus, the tradition of civil engineering for my son and computer science for my daughter has to be finished.
 At the time when Kalpana Chawla can bang on the moon, why can’t we girls opt for civil engineering?

Wallies 4

Techies 34: Hatchback Wars

IT IS ONNN... as the marketing head from BMW says... BMW now launches its hatchback.. the first ever I series.. the i3... well its against Mercedes A class. BMW i3 will run on electricity.Designed and built from the ground up to run solely on electric power, it is, as we found out earlier this month during a prototype drive, a remarkably good little thing.

The salient details are blindingly simple. It's got a 170bhp electric motor, generating 184lb ft of torque instantly, powered by a 230kg high voltage battery that consists of eight modules, sending drive to the rear wheels - and rear wheels alone. This keeps the steering uncorrupted, and gives it a tight turning circle.
It's light, too. The body is extrememly lightweight, made from a range of materials including carbon fibre reinforced plastic, aluminium and even wood, meaning the whole thing weighs in at just 1195kg. The suspension is made from forged aluminium, the drive shafts are hollow, the 19in forged aluminium wheels are 36 per cent lighter than equivalent steel rims, the door trim is made from renewable materials, and even the ruddy screws and bolts are lightweight aluminium.
That low kerb weight means engineers could make the battery smaller for a given range, which cuts more weight itself, and allied to the 170bhp motor and carbon fibre body, this results in a 0-62mph time of 7.2 seconds. Far from shabby, then. More importantly, it'll do 0-37mph in just 3.7 seconds, a far more accurate reflection of its potential around town, while top speed sits at 93mph.

Of course, with any electric car, the usual talk of ‘range-anxiety' will inevitably rear its head. As such, the ‘standard' BMW i3 offers between 80 to 100 miles, but BMW also offers a i3 Range Extender. That car comes with a tiny 650cc petrol engine developing 34bhp, mounted next to the electric motor just above the rear axle, that powers a generator to recharge the battery. There's a tiny nine-litre fuel tank, and although the 0-62mph sprint for this models drops by over half a second to 7.9s, crucially, you get between 160 and 186 miles of claimed range.
BMW reckons you can even drive the i3 using just one pedal. Obviously, there are brake and accelerator pedals, but as soon as you lift off the accelerator, the motor switches immediately from drive to generator, feeding power back into the battery. The side-effect of this is to slow the car down. If this brake-energy regen causes the same effect as proper braking, the i3 even illuminates the brake lights.

Now, when we tested the prototype i3, the motor braking wasn't as powerful as in the Mini E. But, because it's RWD, any more power on the rear brakes would make it unstable on slippery surfaces. That's not really ideal.

Inside, there's the option of four different interiors, allowing buyers to customize the interior to their specification, all featuring sustainable materials including wood, natural fibres and naturally tanned leather.

At this point, you're probably wondering about a couple of things - recharging and, erm, price. Well, the standard ‘Fast Charging' unit will replenish the battery up to 80 per cent within three hours - with a special BMW ‘Wallbox' - or between eight and ten hours from a standard household socket. And as for price? Prices for the standard i3 start at Rs 20,00,000.

It'll go on sale in November this year, though you'll be able to order it from August.

Techies 33:Lenticular clouds

We think these clouds look like delicious wisps of marshmallow! But did you know that this type of cloud is also often mistaken as a UFO? Due to their often saucer-like shape, some people tend to jump to the wrong conclusion! 

So how are Lenticular clouds formed? They are formed when a current of moist air is forced upwards as it travels over a mountain, causing the moisture to condense and form a cloud. Lenticular clouds also tend to hang around in the same stationary position for days. This is because the flow of moist air continually resupplies the cloud with the moisture it needs to retain its position and shape.

It is also interesting that this lenticular cloud is hovering over these large fans. It is these large fans that are able to supply a constant flow of air to the cloud.

Techies 32

Dell is reportedly investing in wearable tech, with an eye to developing smartwatch devices, according to a report from The Guardian. Dell itself is saying that it’s looking closely at the wearable-tech trend, with the aim of predicting what personal computing will look like in five years’ time. Sure, it’s a smart move, but it’s also an obvious one: If there’s a computer company out there with an R&D department that isn’t at least exploring wearables, they should probably just pack it in.

Of course, Dell isn’t doing anything different from what it has done for the past decade or so with R&D efforts aimed at a five-year outlook for wearables. Which is to say it’s probably missing the boat.Google is getting ready to ship its first bold experiment with Google Glass. And Apple is said to beprepping an iWatch to ship, possibly as soon as later this year, prompting the company to secure trademarks for the iWatch name in a variety of different global markets.

If this does become a trend, and if consumers actually like it and embrace it as the next wave in personal computing, Dell will be years late and probably offer something uninspiring and derivative, the same way it did with PDA and mobile/smartphone tech.

Dell had a really bad recent financial quarter, and is seeing its global share of PC sales slip continually – not great when that’s a market that’s already facing problems. News that it’s looking to wearables as a life raft shouldn’t exactly be taken as uplifting, but at least it’s a sign the company still has a pulse.

Recent Floods in Uttrakhand region, left not only the people of Uttrakhand but also the whole country with tears. Death tolls to a 1000, more than 1000 missing and 7-10 thousand people are still stuck there.. If someone you know was lost in this, is still missing.. you can check here..

Techies: 31

Nokia Watchout...Something about real wireless charging 

Yes, this is the most trending tech news now adays charging your smartfone without wires, and please when i am talking about wireless technology i am not even talking about a dock based charging. This is going to be revolutionary guys. As per the latets news Intel is the new company to join the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP). The A4WP technology uses near-field magnetic resonance technology to wirelessly charge devices. Intel joins several giants including Samsung, Qualcomm, LG and HTC as a board member of the group. The group has a total of 40 global, technology industry leaders. The aim of A4Wp is to create a wireless power transfer (WPT) ecosystem that delivers spatial freedom in the user experience and industrial design of wireless battery charging of portable consumer electronics device.

Regarding the new alliance, Navin Shenoy, vice president, PC client group and general manager, mobile client platform division at Intel said

Intel believes the A4WP specification, particularly the use of near-field magnetic resonance technology, can provide a compelling consumer experience and enable new usage models that make device charging almost automatic. In joining A4WP, we look forward to working alongside other member companies and contributing to standards that help fuel an ecosystem of innovative solutions capable of simultaneously charging a range of devices, from low-power accessories to smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks.

Qualcomm introduced WiPower Technology that was approved in January, 2013, by the Alliance for Wireless Power. It wirelessly powers mobile phones, tablets, and more devices using inductive wireless energy transfer  that doesn’t require you to precisely position a device on a charging area. Hope we can expect some new technology based on this from Intel soon.

Romans 8 : on revenge and forgiveness

We hate everything about bullies — the bullying, the being bullied, and the standing by silently while someone else is being bullied.  The bully feels helpless in the face of his own senseless rage.  The victim feels oddly and wrongly ashamed, as if something in their very being invited mistreatment.  The silent bystander feels in some ways worst of all, both victim and victimizer, complicit in guilt and yet deemed worthless enough by the bully to be subjected to watching their crime.
I once heard a Vietnam vet describe the concept of what he called “third party forgiveness.”  He said we need to forgive not just the things others have done to us; or the things we have done to others; but also the things we have seen others do to other people.
That’s a lot of forgiving.
The problem is there is something inside all of us that prizes revenge.  ”I hope that man that incarcerated those three women for ten years DOESN’T get the death penalty,” someone said to me yesterday about Ariel Castro.  ”I hope he is put in a prison where others mistreat HIM, so he experiences the same thing he did to those women.”
Holocaust victim Elie Weisel said something similar about Bernie Madoff.  Weisel should know better.  He wrote in his memoir Night that when the Nazis treated him like an animal, he found himself behaving like one.  And yet when Weisel lost most of his money to Madoff’s ponzi scheme, Weisel wrote that he hoped Madoff would spend the rest of his life in a prison cell with a video running 24-7 of his victims.  Weisel said this before Madoff’s son committed suicide.  I’m not sure if Weisel still feels Madoff needs a 24-7 video after that kind of a consequence.
Why do we want bullies, criminals and other people who have maimed us to experience the hurt they inflicted?  Why do we want to exact an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?  What is it in us that has an automatic revenge button that gets triggered the moment someone hurts us?
Is it possible that we each have a sense of divine justice?  Are we humans so made in God’s image that we automatically know that a wrong must be punished? Do we have God’s laws written on our hearts, as the Bible says of our consciences?  I can’t think of any other explanation.
And yet when we talk of exacting revenge like this, we forget the most important thing.  If our sense of justice comes from God, why do we find it so hard to trust that same God to exact justice in the best possible way?  That is part of what Paul is trying to get at here in Romans 8.  He’s saying who are we to argue with God?  God is the potter.  We are the clay.  Part of peace comes from recognizing that the potter has the right to do whatever He wants with the clay.  Romans 9:20-22.
No one could read about the hell house those three victims of Ariel Castro lived in without weeping.  The policemen who released the women were crying.  The women saw the sunshine twice in ten years. We feel the pain of those three women, even as we know we can’t even imagine their pain — and that, too, is part of our pain.  We are the bystanders who want to suffer for others but can’t.
Luckily for us, we have a God who did suffer for us.  The potter could have broken every one of us clay jars.  Instead, God became clay Himself.  He was broken for us.  He suffered the pain of hell so we wouldn’t have to.
Because His justice was satisfied on the cross, God forgives us, but His only condition is that we forgive each other.  He wants us to forgive the things we see others do to others.  He begs us to let go of hurts others have inflicted on us.  He longs for us to receive His forgiveness.  He says it’s the only way to heal.
If someone really needs to see a video 24-7 of all the wrongs they’ve inflicted on other people, God can do that, too, by playing it on the screens of their minds.  Maybe that’s already happened to Madoff.  Who knows. But maybe not, because we humans don’t really know what kind of spiritual torture other people deserve.  We don’t know what kind of suffering their consciences have imposed on them.  We don’t know what kind of suffering their hard hearts have given them.
There is nothing more painful than having a hard heart.  Hard hearts condemn us to live in a world of hate, rage, suspicion and loneliness.  All crimes come from hard hearts.  No matter whether we are cruel to others, indifferent, thoughtless or actively malicious, everything evil we’ve ever done comes from the same source: a hard heart.
A hard heart can only be broken with softness.  God has a soft heart toward us that offers us only kindness, sweetness, love and mercy.  We don’t really understand mercy.  It’s not our natural response.  But while we may not understand it, if we go there we discover it’s the best place to live.  It’s a tender place.  It’s a vulnerable place.  It’s a scary place.  And it requires knowing we need mercy.  It requires letting go of justice and the law and “well I did THAT so maybe I didn’t do THAT but you did THIS and I deserve THAT.” It lets us instead focus on God’s forgiveness for us, not on focusing on what others have done wrong.  Only when we accept the need for mercy can we love others – all others — even the bullies.  Even when we have met the bully and he is us.

Romans 7 : how to be the fastest runner

For anyone who anxiously studies the best way to do things, the New York Times ran a heartening article last fall on the best way to run.  A highly scientific study concluded that there is no one best way to run.  Myths of Running, October 15, 2012.   Hallelujah.  Just knowing that is liberating.  We can take one anxiety off the check list of our brains when we run.  We no longer have to worry about whether our heel, midfoot or frontfoot is striking first.   Because I don’t know about you, but anytime I go running I’m constantly trying to outsmart myself.  I’m trying to trick myself into going faster just a “little” longer; or in sprinting just to the “next bend”; or telling myself to at least try to pass that 100 year old woman who is walking faster than I can run….
But when we engage in those kind of mind games, how can there be two parts of our brain?  It’s the kind of interesting dichotomy brought to life so well in The Inner Game of Tennis.  We have an inner self who is condemning and judgmental and who makes the performer in us freeze up.  And then we all have a self who can just let go, who performs far better.  Fine.  Great.  Got it.  But how do we use our “self” to let go of our “self”?  We know there’s a jolly happy relaxed self who could beat Federer.  But how do we use our jolly self to outsmart our inner Cruella deVille??
It seems paradoxical to just try harder.  I mean, how are you supposed to “try harder” in order to get into the zone where we stop trying??
Here in this famous chapter of Romans 7, Saint Paul leaps straight into the heart of this paradox.  His despairing cries about human nature suggest that trying harder only backfires.  Here’s what he says about himself:  ”I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it.  Instead, I do what I hate… I want to do what is good, but I don’t.  I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.”  Romans 7:15, and 18-19.
I love his honesty.  Most people like to say they’re good.  They like to say all you have to do is try hard to be a good person.  They say that’s enough.
But I don’t think they believe it.  Why else do so many people overdrink, overeat, procrastinate, pop anti-anxiety medication or focusing medication or anti-depression medication; hate their to-do lists, ignore their children, be rude to their parents, obsessively collect mailboxes or car tires or baptismal fonts?  What is behind all the nonsensical crazy things we know other people do – and therefore have to admit, in our heart of hearts, that we must do also since it’s logically impossible that we’re the only person who doesn’t act a little crazy sometimes?  Maybe we don’t thieve from the tills at work.  But we all have our stuff, the things we want to do but just can’t seem to do.  For Paul it was coveting.  He says it’s as if there’s this dark power at work inside of him and the moment someone tells him what is right to do, the dark power tells him to do the opposite.  He says there’s a war going on inside him, and he feels buffeted by it. More than that, he says he feels like a “slave” to the dark powers inside of him – as if no matter how hard he tries, “inevitably” he can’t make himself choose the lifegiving ways of, for instance, not coveting.
I think King Solomon put it best when he said the hearts of people are full of evil and there is “madness” in our hearts while we live.  Ecc. 9:3 (NIV).  What else but evil accounts for exploding bombs at the finish line of a marathon?  Solomon’s words cut through the age old debate of whether evil people are crazy.  He just says that evil IS “madness.”  It’s “mad” to want to hurt others – of course it is – and yet we’ve all done it.  Our mouths act like bombs sometimes, going off when we least expect it and maiming all within earshot.  Or we might tell ourselves not to EVER worry again – whether because we are starting to trust God, or for the practical reason that we’ve figured out worry doesn’t help anything – and then we immediately find ourselves worrying over the dumbest things.  ”Stop worrying,” we order ourselves in frustration, only to realize that now we’re worried that we’re worried.  Trying harder can just make us feel miserable.
It’s enough to make us cry, along with Saint Paul, o who can free us from all this?? Romans 7:24.
The answer is not to trick ourselves into obedience – like my friend who likes to imagine scary evil people running after him to make himself run faster.  It’s not to say God or our mother or our neighbor will hate us if we don’t tow the line.  Instead, Paul is talking about a way of living inside of the zone.  It’s a zone of acceptance.  It’s a place without condemnation.  It’s a land of joy.  When we accept the truth of Saint Paul’s riff on human nature – that evil and madness are within our hearts – we can give up.  We can stop pretending to ourselves and others and instead surrender to God.  That’s when we get to do what Paul calls “living in the Spirit.”  We get to live in the land of grace.  We live in the joy of God’s love, a joy based not on our performance but just on existing.  It’s the joy of knowing we belong to Him because He made us.
The key to receiving all this is admitting we need it.  Admitting our wayward nature opens the door for God to do the work.  He did it on the cross.  We don’t have to try harder.  We let go, and God does the rest.  God cannot work with us when we’re pretending we don’t need Him.  A doctor can only heal someone who knows they’re sick.  We have to be willing to swallow whatever medicine God gives us.  And if we are finally willing to give up trying harder to be good, God comes in and fills us with His love instead.  He paid the price for all those times even 100 year old women walk faster than we can try to sprint through life.  We stop trying to be full of “good deeds” that fool nobody except maybe ourselves, and then only on a good day, and instead we ask for mercy.
Mercy is a beautiful thing.  It looks weak but it’s strong.  When we receive mercy – God’s undeserved love – it fills us with joy.  It fills us with strength.  It gives us boundless energy.  We lose our anxiety.  We can focus on the task at hand.  We can live in the moment.  Jesus is “the answer,” as Paul concludes here.  Romans 7:25.  He’s the answer to every problem, to every issue, to every time we try harder only to have it backfire.
Our response to mercy is to be thankful.  Being thankful makes us feel like we’re running so fast we don’t even notice if anyone is passing us.  It’s like going for a long run with our i-pods set on All Songs.  No matter what comes next, it’s always a song we love.  We don’t have to try harder.  We can relax into it.  After all, when we let go, God carries us.  There is no paradox.  It only seemed like one because we thought it was up to us.  But when we surrender, God can finally take care of us the way he has always longed to.  His love makes us move faster than any runner on earth because in His arms, we fly.

Walking on water

The day after Easter I woke to one of those dawns that has to speak for itself.
It started slowly.

I was longing for coffee and room service hadn’t opened yet.  I thought the dawn was over.  So with nothing else to do, I kept watching without expectation.  The sky pinked.

Entranced, I kept watching. Beams of light shot out from behind the clouds.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, the light triangulated.  I looked around.  Was I the only one watching this?  I began to get overwhelmed.  Was God putting on a light show for me alone?  Come to me, God promises, and I will show you great and wonderful things you do not know.

The sun kept moving in the sky, and the lightbrush moved with it.

I stopped texting phone photos to girlfriend and kept my real camera fixed on the light.  It was changing by the second now, and if I’d taken my eyes off it I might have missed something.  I drew closer.

 And then closer.

The sunlight was walking on the water.

The heavens were telling the glory of God.

Who am I that thou art mindful of me?

Romans 6 : on the love that blossoms in caregiving

I used to fear about a thousand and one things in life.  Breast cancer was my deepest dread.  Actually scratch that.  It was about a billion and one things I feared.  I was haunted by everything from being attacked by wild birds, Hitchcock-like, to failing on my exams, to saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, to losing a limb, to losing my teeth, to, well…  you get the picture. And then something strange happened.  I discovered there were all these things I thought I HAD to have to be happy.  Yet when I got them I was kind of like, well, … yawn.
That kind of revelation can cut many ways, right?  You can start to think you don’t want anything.  That’s a zen life.  It’s a letting go of all desires.  But who wants to live without desires? It’s like being a zombie.  Desires are the lifeblood of our existence.  So maybe instead, we have to figure out what we REALLY desire and hold the rest of our lives lightly.  Maybe we have to learn not to “set our hearts” on things we don’t really want.  But how?
To answer that, it might help to walk around inside something we think we DON’T want, something we fear, which for many of us is caregiving.  I mean real caregiving – feeding, bathing and bandaging someone who is messy sick.  A few people are gifted in that area.  But most of us fear it.  When my Dad was sick, I left the true caregiving to my mother and the nurses.  I was happy to sit on the arm of his chair and entertain him.  And if there had been no other caregivers, I’m sure I would have rallied.  But I wasn’t jumping into the fray.
I shouldn’t have feared it.  Because I had already learned something curious about caregiving that came from having children.  Before I had my own, I didn’t “get” babies.  What were you supposed to DO with a baby?  Aren’t they boring?  And who in their right mind would want to change a smelly diaper?
Everyone told me you had to wait until you had your own baby to get it.  They said you find your own babies beautiful and fascinating. They were right, of course.  But like most things in life, you can’t really understand that until you experience it for yourself.
When my son was born, they popped him straight into the ICU.  He was healthy as a clam, but they wanted to make sure because he had been born with a cleft lip and palate.  So he lay on his little side wearing the blue and white striped hat that New York Hospital slips on every baby’s head.  I sat on the other side of his incubator and watched him.  He had the sweetest most contented look on his face you’ve ever seen , and BOOM.  I fell in love.
We brought him home, and he kind of just sat there.  ”He doesn’t do anything,” I complained to the baby nurse.
“Look at his hands,” she said.
I looked.  He couldn’t move.  His cries were the volume of a baby eagle’s.  But his little hands were waving in the air as if he were conducting music only he could hear. I was entranced.  I discovered I could watch him for hours.
When you look with eyes of love at another human, EVERYTHING they do becomes endlessly fascinating.
But there’s something even more fascinating about babies.  It happens as a result not just of watching them relax in a cute hat or wave their tiny little hands, but when you look after them.  There’s a love that blossoms in caregiving.   There’s a depth of passion that arises only from bathing, feeding and changing them at their messiest.
And if your child has a medical need, you discover that the deeper their need the more your love blossoms.  The doctors told us that newborn skin is almost as malleable as foetal skin.  So the moment my son was born, the doctors at NYU Medical Center crafted a moulding plate for his gums and nose to help his features grow in the right direction.  That meant I had to glue bandages on the delicate skin of his cheeks, rip them off twice a day and reglue them back on no matter how blistered and sore his little cheeks got.  I wouldn’t let anyone else do it, even though it killed me every time.  He had two operations before he was a year old.  In the grand scheme of things, my baby’s medical issues were nothing.  And at age eighteen now, he looks fabulous.  He’s having what will hopefully be his last surgery this summer, an enormously complicated jaw surgery, and he seems as completely relaxed about it as he is about most things.  His calm gives me permission to be calm. But eighteen years ago, when he was my first baby, ANYTHING that went wrong turned me into a tense mess.
“This too shall pass,” that same baby nurse told me, every time my baby screamed.
“Right,” I thought, sarcastically.
She was right.  I didn’t know it then.  But the more I fussed over him and tended to his ripped skin and wept over his little bloody stitches, the more my own love grew.  The deeper his need, the more I loved.
It’s this kind of deep love that arises only from caregiving that Carol Mithers wrote about so movingly in the NY Times recently:
“I wasn’t one of those women who went all dewy-eyed with love the second she gave birth.  Within two weeks, though, I was transformed, flattened by a passion I had never even dreamed existed, and it was the grunt work of motherhood that did it to me, the holding, touching, watching, feeding, smelling.  I had always imagined that you put up with the job of caring for a baby because you loved her, but for me it was the unfathomable, slightly terrifying intimacy of caregiving that brought the love.”
“And with my old people it was the same.  Just as it is with a baby, your job is tending, and the comfort you bring is simple and physical.  You come to know the precise texture of thin, dry skin, the kind of touch that pleases, the small things that bring a smile.”  New York Times, Tuesday March 26, 2013, “Suddenly They’re All Gone.”
Mithers is right.  It’s the caregiving that brings the love.  And yet, we fear being needy.  We don’t want to let anyone take care of us.  We resist asking for help.  We shouldn’t, of course.  It’s our neediness that can allow the love of others to blossom.  And isn’t one of our deepest desires to be loved?  But apparently we have an equally strong contrasting desire, which is to be independent.
So we all seem to have a built in mechanism that prevents us from getting the very thing we most want.
Luckily for us, the one who created us already knows this about us.  His sacrifice bridges the gap between what we want and how we act in a way that prevents us from getting what we want.  His tender passion for us on the cross, a passion that will be spoken about, re-enacted and sung about this Easter weekend, is the deepest act of caregiving of all.  He cared for our deepest desire, the desire for unconditional love.  He took the physical, emotional and spiritual wounds we deserve, so we can be healed of our spiritual sickness.
We resist hearing that.  We don’t want to be dependent on anyone, especially not God.  We don’t want to be beholden.  We don’t want to have to obey Him.  We want the seeming “freedom” to do our own thing.
What we fail to realize is that dependence on God is what we were made for.  We’re at our happiest and most fulfilled when we swim in the waters for which we were bred.   The more we need God, the more we rely on Him.  And only when we are utterly dependent on Him, can He use us for His purposes.  When we rely on ourselves, we are wandering in mazes lost.
That’s the truth we get to walk around inside of for the rest of our lives.  And what we discover when we do that is that God’s love IS the desire that thrills us: “In Him, we live and move and have our being”.   Acts 17:27.  St. Luke’s words almost shout their way off the page.  We LIVE in Jesus.  We have our “being” in God.  We breathe in His breath.  That is our deepest desire.  And the more we begin to trust Him and His love, the more we can face all our fears with peace.
My son’s baby nurse wasn’t quite right.  Some things in this world don’t “pass”.  Some diseases are terminal.  Some limbs can never be restored.  We’re not glass lizards, able to regrow our own tails.  Everyone has a crucifixion to undergo on this earth, and some are far worse than others.  But there is one crucifixion that releases each of us.  It happens when we “die” to ourselves and our ideas of what we need. Usually it happens because God allows the things we thought we had to have to be ripped from our hands, and we feel like we’re dying.  Yet if we turn to Him in our need, He cares for us.  In His hands, we discover a love blossoming that is greater than anything we’d ever known or imagined.  It’s through this process of discovery Paul describes here in Romans 6 that we decide we no longer want so strongly the things God says are bad for us, and we decide we want Him more.  Romans 6:6.
And as we grow in trust, and begin to feel God’s love blossom inside us as we allow Him to care for us, God opens our eyes to the truth that the things we dread most can bring us the greatest joy of all.

Romans 5 : the gift of feeling useless

Some days we don’t feel ourselves.  We feel blechy.  Our bodies don’t want to function at their peak capacity.  We need a vacation, but the only thing outside is a grey sky.  We feel restless.  Feeling useless can feel almost like hunger, but eating doesn’t make it go away.  We wonder what’s wrong.  Usually we can bounce out of the feeling by achieving something.  But when we feel less than zippy, it’s hard to achieve anything.  Those are the days we feel our worst, and yet they’re the very days that can be our best.  Why?  Because those days are opportunities to explore what it means to be just us. Who are we when we’re not achieving something?  Who are we when we – gasp – don’t get to brag about anything because we can’t think of one thing we’re good at?  Who are we when we don’t have the energy to remind ourselves of what separates us from the crowd?  Who are we when there is no crowd?
We just are.
And that’s enough.  Except we forget that.  We thought we had to prove ourselves not just to other people, but to ourselves.  But really?  What exactly are we trying to prove?  Who is the one setting up this standard?  Where does our idea of perfect come from?
Perfect comes, by definition, from our perfect God.  And we somehow get it all backwards.  We think WE have to be perfect, but the truth is, He is the only perfect one.  And in His perfection, He loves us no matter how useless we are or feel and He longs to cover us with Himself.
That’s why those days when we feel under the weather are blessings.  Those days we want to crawl right back into bed are opportunities.  Those times when we don’t want to work out – or work –  are gifts.  Our weaknesses are a door.  They’re a way into a place we would never willingly go on our own.  The more we are stripped of our own gifts, the more we are forced to ask for God’s help.  To ask for help means we don’t have it all in ourselves.
That was true all along.  We just forgot.
If we ask for help from the one who loves us just because, we discover that our weaknesses open us up to the world of grace.  They unlock the closed barren places in our hearts that can only blossom in the presence of unconditional love.  We move from the emptiness we feel when we can’t achieve, into a fullness we couldn’t have even imagined.  We discover a new joy and a confidence that “lasts”.  Romans 5:2.
It’s this kind of experience of learning to depend on God, I think, that informs these seemingly difficult words of Paul about how we “can rejoice… when we run into problems and trials.”  Romans 5:3.  It’s not just because, as Pink sings, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  It’s that the strong you discover when you rely on the Lord, is the most beautiful strong of all.  When Paul here talks about endurance, strength of character and hope, he’s not using these words the way we usually do.  It’s not a white knuckle grip on our humanity.  He’s talking about enduring anything in God’s presence; about a strength that comes from relying on God’s strength instead of our own; about character honed in the furnace of humility, where we yearn for a godly character and discover how short we fall; and a hope in God rather than in a change in our circumstances.  Romans 5:3-4.  This is not the mantra of self-reliance or a muscular kind of Christianity.  It’s the tearful grateful joy of the one who relies on the cross alone.
We often think the cross is a symbol of condemnation.  Paul reminds us it’s really a symbol of how God loves us even at our weakest.  God died to restore his “friendship” with us when we were “helpless.”  Romans 5:6, and 10.
So our weaknesses are an opportunity to walk more closely with God.  They’re an opportunity for us to let God do what He longs to:  ”to fill our hearts with love”.  Romans 5:5.  We discover in our helplessness something glorious.  We find the power of our “wonderful new relationship with God.”  Romans 5:11.  It’s the power of a love based only on God and not on anything we’ve done.
Knowing that lifts our heads up high.  It restores the light to our eyes.  It puts a new song in our hearts.  It makes us smile from the inside out.  We start to realize that just being WITH God gives our lives the sense of purpose and destiny we’ve always longed for.  Worshipping Him and being thankful to Him lift our spirits higher than the heavens.  So we start asking not whether we’re being “useful” but whether we’re in God’s presence.  And THAT is a question we can always answer in the positive.

Romans 4 : A stranger in a strange land no more

In WAVE, Sonali Deraniyagala writes of losing her two sons, husband and parents to the tsunami in Sri Lanka because she chose that day to vacation by the sea: “I can only recover myself when I keep them near.  If I distance myself from them, and their absence, I am fractured.  I am left feeling I’ve blundered into a stranger’s life.”   As usual with extreme situations, Deraniyagala has tapped into a universal truth.  We all feel at times like we’ve blundered into a stranger’s life.  Even though for most of us that fractured feeling remains exiled to the shadowlands of our lives, we can feel its presence.  It can haunt us, especially when we feel it pressing close.  Sometimes, the fractured feeling springs out of the hinterlands and confronts us head on.  It stands in the middle of our roads and refuses to get out of our way.  Because there are times when we all feel like a stranger to our own lives.  When that happens we remember almost with homesickness what it felt like to belong to our lives.  Why?  What’s going on?  And how do we fix it?  How do we feel at home in our lives no matter what the circumstances? The first and most likely cause of feeling “disassociated” from our lives is the one Deraniyagala writes of: grief.  When tragedy strikes, an automatic coping mechanism is denial.  When something too awful to contemplate happens, we just don’t contemplate it.  We shut off the valve.  We are, therefore, in a very real sense not at “home” in the reality of our lives in that moment.  Sometimes real life is just too difficult to inhabit.  It’s a healthy short term coping mechanism, in the same way that when you first break a limb you have to immobilize it.  It would be silly to wear a sling if our arms were fine.  It would be silly NOT to wear a sling when we break our arms.  It’s part of the way we heal.  We bind the broken part of us up; we stop it from moving; we can’t, don’t and shouldn’t use it the way we normally do.
So if grief is the cause of our feeling like a “stranger” to our lives, the first solution is to normalize our feeling of disassociation.  We can remind ourselves that we are in denial.  We can tell ourselves that the sad thing that has happened will automatically make us feel “strange”, as well as sad, because we are going to have to process it in little pieces.  Our brains will have to “chunk” the information.  Bit by bit, the truth will begin to “sink” in.  At least we hope so.  Because, of course, denial is never meant to be a long term solution, only a short term one.
Eventually, we have to face the truth.  We all heal at different paces.  We are never to judge any one else’s healing process.  But when looking at our own grief, there comes a time to ask ourselves: am I being courageous in the face of this tragedy?  How can I integrate the grief with the rest of my life?  How do I face the reality of who I am in the light of my changed circumstances?  How do I accept this grief so that I can move on?  How do I avoid my desire to Miss Havisham this tragedy?
I wouldn’t presume to answer that question for someone who has lost a child.  But I can say that any divorcee with children knows the disorienting feeling of living two seemingly compartmentalized lives.   We’re a swinging single one minute and a harried parent the next.  If our children are teenagers, it can feel even more fractured.  One minute we’re lecturing our child on the dangers of friending strangers on social media, and the next minute some mustachioed stranger is sidling up to us in a darkened bar and asking if we come here often.  We’re tempted to respond: “Buddy, I don’t even know who I AM so I how do you expect me to answer the question whether I come here often… because I MIGHT have been here before, and I may have even gone out with YOU before –  you look oddly familiar – or is it just that you look ODD –  but the thing is, it wasn’t really ME that came in here because I’m a MIDDLE AGED MOM and we MOM’S don’t DATE!!!”
As you can imagine, that’s not the kind of response recommended by the dating books.  But it’s the one we’re sometimes tempted to give.  The dating divorcee dilemma is just one instance of another larger cause of feeling like a stranger to our own lives: we get that “strange” feeling when our lives don’t look like what we thought they should look like.  This can be just a different face of grief.  We grieve the loss of our dreams.  We impose oughts and shoulds on our lives, and when the two don’t match up we feel strangered.
But dreams were never meant to be oppressive.  If we wanted four children, should we really be sad we “only” have one? Think about it.  We can never really fully know another human being.  They will always surprise us.  So viewed that way, one child offers us infinity.  Or if we always wanted a spouse, should we feel like a stranger to a life where we get to go out and meeting interesting people every singel day?  Similarly, if we pictured ourselves as being married forever to the same person and growing old together, we will disassociate from a widowed or divorced life.  But we can we reframe that, too.  We can instead open ourselves to the chance that we might meet someone even more suited to us in middle age than the person we met in our twenties.  Or we can open ourselves to the idea that we can explore new worlds, both near and far, in a way closed to us when we were committed to caring for just one person.  And as for the compartmentalized feeling that arises from dating strangers one minute and then lounging comfortably with our children the next, we can start to see our lives as mosaics.  Or as an editor friend of mine put it last night, we can start to see ourselves as walking around in different “rooms” in the homes of our lives.  For some of us, our homes seem to include not just threadbare sofas in t.v. rooms but also exotic new landscapes.
In other words, when we let go of the “shoulds” of our lives, we open ourselves up to the “what ifs.”  It’s a lovelier way to live, and ultimately more satisfying.
But on a deeper more existential level, what’s going on under all this disassociation?  Why do we even get this “stranger in a strange land” feeling?  Why should denial of reality be a coping mechamism?  What is it about this”I don’t belong in this life” feeling that even emulates “coping”?  What I’m asking is:  why should it HELP to feel like we’re not at home in our lives?
Perhaps the issue is that on a very deep level none of us is really at home in our lives.  The title of Robert Heinlein’s famous science fiction classic, after all, comes not from Heinlein’s imagination but from the mouth of God.  It’s a phrase from the Bible.  Moses described himself as a “stranger in a strange land” because he lived in exile from his childhood home of Egypt; Moses had to flee because he murdered one of Pharaoh’s abusive guards in a fit of rage.  Exodus 2:22.  Similarly, when Abraham obeyed God’s call to go to a land God would show him, Paul writes that Abraham lived there as a “stranger in a strange land.”  Hebrews 11:9.  Those two examples illustrate two sides of why we feel like a stranger from ourselves on this earth, both stemming from the imperfect nature of this world.
First, we feel like a stranger to our lives because we sin.  We like to see ourselves as perfect, so when we live outside that paradigm, we tend to go into denial.  We think it’s not really “us” that could act or think like that.  On one level, we’re right.  It isn’t our best self.  It’s not the self who was created in God’s image that could lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, gossip, be jealous, covet something that belongs to someone else or be selfish.  But the fact is, it IS us.  To be fully at home in our lives we need a way to own our sinful side.  The Bible describes us as beings made of heart, soul, mind and body.  To be at home in our lives is to integrate those selves.  It means to integrate the fact that we have a “human” side – no matter where we locate it physically – that is less than all we want.
We can’t make our sinful side go away, no matter how hard we try.  Nor do we want to just blandly “accept” it with a big “who cares?”  Because we do care.  Instead, the only way to live at peace with our sin is literally just that: to make peace with it.  In other words, to forgive.  A refusal to accept the concept of forgiveness is deadly.  I’ve seen it.  If we can’t accept forgiveness – our own, other people’s and God’s – then we will never be able to even acknowledge our sinful self.  We will always be a stranger to ourselves.   We will always disassociate, always dissemble, always live in fear that our real selves will overtake us like a monster we’d rather keep hidden in the attic. We will always viciously attack anyone who dares criticize us.  But if we can swallow our pride – no matter how bitter it tastes – we can humble ourselves to see the truth.  We are fallen people who desperately need the forgiveness of others.  We are imperfect people who desperately need our Creator to forgive us.  We are sinful humans who need to forgive ourselves.
This kind of forgiveness is freely available to us, as this chapter of Romans so beautifully declares..  That’s why David writes of the “happiness” of those “who are declared righteous without working for it: ‘Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven.’”  Romans 4:5-8.  It is the joy of the one who expects to be exiled, who is instead welcomed home with open arms.  It’s as if we think we’re about to walk into a prison cell and instead are ushered through a gate into green pastures.  God promises us we can live at home with Him by “faith” alone.  It is “given as a free gift.”  Romans 4:16.  Jesus “was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised to life to make us right with God.”  Romans 4:25.  We are seen as “right” with God no matter how “wrong” we act.  This is free for us because God Himself paid the price.  God left His home and lived as a stranger in our world, so that we can be welcomed by Him as IF we were perfect.  Accepting that miraculous gift of forgiveness makes us so grateful we become people who can offer to others the same kind of forgiveness.  When we receive mercy, we become merciful.  We forgive others.  We forgive ourselves.  We receive.
It’s hard to live in a world of grace.  I know it should be easy.  It’s free, after all.  But somehow it’s so hard.  For me, personally, it takes daily reminders.  ”Oh, right.  I’m imperfect.  Oh, I forgot.  God forgives me.  Oh, shoot.  That means He wants me to be merciful to others.  Okay, okay, fine.  It I REALLY have to…. ”  And then we cross the Rubicon all over again and find ourselves on the other side of our self-righteous stuck-up pride, and we think: WHAT WAS I EVEN THINKING BEFORE???  We suddenly feel how lovely it is to live in a land of mercy.  It IS lovely.  Until…. we forget where the best home is, and we go back to our little lonely worlds of self-righteousness and pride, and the process starts all over again.
On top of resolving the homesickness occasioned by our sin, there’s a second step to feeling at home in our lives; it’s the one hinted at by the Abraham story above.  It’s the idea that even as sinners forgiven by God’s grace, we will still only feel at “home” in this earth to the extent that we can trust God.  Because God calls us to feel at home even HERE, in this broken imperfect world.  We resist that call.  We don’t think we should feel at home here.  We want to be at home in palaces.  We “deny” that we could be at home even in grief.  We want to live in our dream worlds.
Instead, God calls us to feel at home even in broken infrastructures, broken relationships and our own broken hearts.  The only way to do that is if we like Abraham can accept God’s promises based on faith alone.  Faith enables us to feel at “home” even in a strange world.  We can say to our griefs: “you are strange.  You don’t belong to me.  And yet I will own you because my God says that one day, He will wipe away every tear from my eyes.  My God promises that He will bring good out of bad.  My God says He will redeem every broken thing, even me.”  This is the kind of faith that enabled Abraham to believe God would make him the father of many nations even though Sarah had already gone through menopause.  For when we open our hearts to miracles, miracles happen.
Paradoxically, the moment we accept that we are strangers in a strange land – because of our sin, the sin of others, and the griefs occasioned by living in a fallen world where waves can rise up out of nowhere and engulf us – we do become at home here.  We become “homed” not by a bitter or fatalistic reframing, but by believing in the love of a God who promises to redeem us.  We become at home in unfamiliar landscapes because we know God is with us always.  We become at home in the odd places God calls us to go, because we live by faith not sight.  We embrace the strangeness of this world by believing that God will make even the strangest things melt into the most familiar and yet elusive thing of all: love.
But what happens when we fail?  What happens when we know all this, we may even believe it, and yet we still feel fractured?  That’s when all we can do is offer our hearts up to God and ask Him to help us.  And right then, no matter where we are, what we’ve done, or how many people despise us, a door opens in front of us.  If we walk through it, we’ll find a table set, a fire burning, and that sense of belonging we’ve always sensed existed but could never find on our own.  That’s because this door is a person.  The reason God can ask us to feel at home in even a broken world, is because the door itself was broken.  When Jesus said “I am the door,” He meant that His body would swing on nails like hinges, to usher us to the land of unbroken promises.  Love is strange.  It doesn’t look the way we thought it should.  It can look like something small, unattractive and broken.  And right there, when things look the strangest, is when Love springs out to greet us in all its unexpected, strange, beautiful, familiar, undeserved glory.

Romans 3 : Real fairy tale endings

 Anyone who loves fairy tales knows what it is to have an insatiable appetite for them.  I used to read them from every culture, translated from every language, and written in every century.  There’s something so … magical about magic.  It taps into something deep inside us.  We’re drawn to it and wonder how to satisfy that deep longing all the time. When I became a Christian in college, it was because I got sick of being restless.  I wanted peace instead of the insatiable.  I was too old for fairy tales.  I wanted real.  I sensed God was real but I didn’t believe in HIm.  So I asked for faith.  And God in His kindness gave it.  I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and it made more “sense” of the world than anything I’d ever heard.  I read a tiny bit of the Bible each night and it must have blossomed in me.  Because one day I realized I actually believed what I was reading. I discovered that all that magic I’d always hungered for in fairy tales was real and accessible — and lighter and sweeter and more lasting than any human fairy tale.
Here in Romans 3 is the true magic that God offers to each of us, and that He gave to me merely for the asking.  It’s such a perfect summary of the good news that I’m launching straight in.  The chapter starts with a truth about human nature that any reader of fairy tales knows.  All humans are capable of great evil:  ”No one is good…  No one knows where to find peace.  No one seeks after God.”   But despite this negative truth, there’s freedom and beauty in here that takes only a moment to unpack.
Because we do “all fall short” of the glory of God.  Our world is full of evil stepmothers and bad fairies and tooth-smiling wolves, and all too often, despite our best intentions, we have seen that evil stepmother and she is us.   So for anyone who knows but can’t conquer her inner wolf, there is joy to be found in the next claim. Paul says ”God has shown a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law.  We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ.  And this is true for everyone who believes no matter who we are.”  Paul says we get a free passage to the magic of God’s presence because Jesus was the one who struck out on the open road and left his home behind.  Jesus was the one who got hurled from the tower by the wicked witch when he tried to rescue the trapped princess.  Jesus “freed us from the penalty for our sins…. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.”
For us imperfect humans then all that remains is to bask in the magic.  For us there is joy, peace and thankfulness.  We can be ushered into the sweetness and light of God’s presence by faith alone.  There’s no room for boasting, because we’ve done nothing to be “accepted” by God.  No more tall tales.  That’s where the magical freedom lies.  For once in our lives, we are in the presence of love that gives all and asks nothing in exchange — except that we accept it thankfully.  Even thankfulness seems to be a gift.  When we realize what’s been given, thankfulness bursts out of us in such abundance that we find ourselves wanting to give Him everything, and we weep because he needs nothing from us at all.
Perhaps we resist believing in God because the pathway to Him sounds too good to be true.  But for once in our lives, why shouldn’t something so wonderful be for us?  Perhaps there really is a place where all our dreams can come true.  Perhaps there really is a place of freedom.  Perhaps there really is a place of acceptance.  Perhaps there really are arms open wide to receive every one of us just as we are without asking us to change first. Perhaps there’s a real fairy godmother whose magic doesn’t end at midnight.  Perhaps there’s a magic coin inside a fish that gives us three wishes that will create rather than destroy us.  Perhaps there is the kind of love that rises in our hearts until the brightest dawn of all breaks with the return of the Son.
Here is the true magic we’ve longed for every day of our lives, but this time it’s real.  Once upon a time there was a lonely girl.  And God came down and loved her.  He loves you, too.
And it’s all just a wish away.

Romans 2 : Upon reflection

Mirrors are funny things.  They reflect back only a two dimensional version of ourselves, and yet there’s a sense in which they have magical powers to show us more and yet less of ourselves than we feel exists.  Fairy tales, fables, myths and children’s stories are full of mirrors with these kind of magical powers.  Snow White’s stepmother had a mirror that showed her the fairest one of all; her mirror seems believable, perhaps reflecting the idea that when we look in the mirror we see idealized versions of other people.   Alice in Wonderland also had a believable mirror.  She had a mirror that was so transparent she could fall into the world of it.  There’s something misty and opaque about mirrors, as if they hint at other worlds, shadow worlds, alternate universes.  Narcissus was so proud he disdained anyone who loved him – until he fell in love with his own reflection in a lake, not realizing he was seeing himself mirrored in the lake’s surface.  Like Alice, Narcissus  fell inside his “mirror”; unlike Alice, however, he died there because his mirror wasn’t magical.  It was unforgiving water.  Narcissus drowning in himself is a metaphor that almost isn’t.  After all, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, a metaphor has to stand for something, and Narcissus actually did drown in his reflection.
Harry Potter fell in love with an image of what he hoped for but could never have in the Mirror of Erised; he saw himself surrounded by adoring parents celebrating his teenage victories even though his parents had passed away when he was a baby.  Dumbledore gently pulls him away from the mirror, explaining that many had lost their lives by staring into the impossible.  The scene is too good and its wisdom too powerful not to revisit:
“Except — “So — back again, Harry.” Harry felt as though his insides had turned to ice. He looked behind him. Sitting on one of the desks by the wall was none other than Albus Dumbledore. Harry must have walked straight past him, so desperate to get to the mirror he hadn’t noticed him.
” — I didn’t see you, sir.”
“Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you,” said Dumbledore, and Harry was relieved to see that he was smiling.
“So,” said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to sit on the floor with Harry, “you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised.”
“I didn’t know it was called that, Sir.”
“But I expect you’ve realized by now what it does.”
“It — well — it shows me my family –”
“And it showed your friend Ron himself as head boy.”
“How did you know –.”
“I don’t need a cloak to become invisible,” said Dumbledore gently.
“Now, can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all.” Harry shook his head.
“Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help.”
Harry thought. Then he said slowly, “It shows us what we want… whatever we want…”
“Yes and no,” said Dumbledore quietly.
“It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.
“The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don’t you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed.” Harry stood up.
“Sir — Professor Dumbledore. Can I ask you something.”
“Obviously, you’ve just done so,” Dumbledore smiled. “You may ask me one more thing, however.”
“What do you see when you look in the mirror.”
“I. I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.” Harry stared.
“One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”
It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. But then, he thought, as he shoved Scabbers off his pillow, it had been quite a personal question.”  HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE.
In all these stories, there is an element in which a mirror shows more than just ourselves.  Mirrors seem in literature to be able to capture visions of what we want to see; what we wish we could be; what others look like; and a world in which we want to live or a world in which we can’t live.  What are the archetypes straining at?   And how do we find a true mirror that shows us as we really are and the world as it really is?  How do we find a magical mirror that captures our dreams in a way we don’t drown in them but can instead walk on water?
The Bible has a lot to say about mirrors.  Perhaps the most famous passage of all is after Paul’s triumphant ode to what love “is” in 1 Corinthians 13, he adds that now we see “through a glass, darkly.”  1 Cor. 13:12 (KJV).  A more modern translation is that now we see “through a mirror, dimly.” (NIV). It’s as if he’s implying we see what love really looks like when we look in a mirror, but we see it dimly, and we don’t see it in ourselves but somehow on the other side of a mirror.  Because what’s magical about this description of love and a mirror is that there’s an element of Alice falling through the looking glass.  Paul doesn’t say we look into a mirror and see ourselves.  He says we see “through” a mirror.  There’s a hint of seeing a reflection and yet also seeing through.  How can that be?  Is the Bible like one of those two way “mirrors” we pass in the airport, where we see ourselves but also the dim outline of a grey man in a grey overcoat surveying us critically to guess if we’re carrying drugs or bombs?  Does the Bible show us ourselves but also a harsh judge on the other side, surveying us?
The Bible claims that when we read God’s Word, several mirror-like things happen.  First, the Bible claims to act like a perfect mirror that reflects ourselves back to ourselves and shows us as we really are:  ”For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”  Hebrews 4:12 (KJV).  A more modern translation explains that the Bible reflects back to us our “innermost thoughts and desires.”  Heb. 4:12 (NLT).  The Bible claims that we are self-deceived; we can justify anything.  It says that only the light of the Holy Spirit working on our hearts through kindness, Scripture and revelation can reveal our true self to ourself.
But at the same time as showing us ourselves, the Bible also shows us God.  And seeing both those things at the same time somehow transforms us into something beautiful.  It transforms us into the person God created us to be.  When we look at the words of the Bible, the Bible seems to show us as a person made in God’s image.  Here’s how Jesus’ brother James explains this mirror-like quality of the Word of God:  ”Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror  and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.”  James 1:23-24.  James seems to imply that listening to the Bible is like looking at the face of someone who has the ability to do what the Word says.  Apparently when we read God’s word we do see our better self.  Let’s say we read how we are to let our gentleness be evident to all – and we think: “oh, yes, yes, yes!  Of course.  I will be gentle, gentler and gentlest today!”  But then the moment we shut the Bible, we feel harshness course through our veins, and even worse, spew out of our mouths.  James says that when we act in an ungodly manner (as defined in the Bible) it’s as if we have forgotten what we look like.  In other words, this is an encouraging verse – even though it always feels to me like a condemning one.  It’s encouraging because James is suggesting that we see ourselves in all our God like possibilities when we read the Bible.  We see what we could be.  We see what we want to be.  We see what we were made to be.
James’ mirror verse is discouraging, however, because we’re all constantly disobeying God.  We can dip into the “mirror” of the Bible countless times daily, see ourselves and see God, and yet not act in a godly way.  We are all therefore “forgetting what we look like” all the time.  Here is where we turn more into Snow White’s stepmother than we would like.  We know God wants us to love others but all too often we feel jealous of them instead.  So here is where we start to need real magic, transforming magic, a way to transform us into the godly image we long for.
So the mirror reference in James suggests that the second way the Bible acts like a mirror is this magical sense of being able to look at the Word and see not not just ourselves but God in it.
There’s another verse about what we “see” in the Bible that starts to point the way to the true magic we long for.  Paul writes: “And all of us, as with unveiled face, [because we] continued to behold [in the Word of God] as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into his very own image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another; [for this comes] from the Lord [Who is] the Spirit.”  1 Cor. 3:18.  According to Paul when we read the Bible we see “as in a mirror” the glory of the Lord.   But here’s where the miracle happens.  By looking at God, we somehow become like God.  We are being transformed into God’s image.  We go from glory to glory.  It’s an astounding claim.  Somehow by looking at God’s glory we become glorious.
I like the sound of that a lot better than feeling guilty for not being perfect.  Because, let’s face it, it’s much easier for me to look in a mirror than it is to be kind.  I can’t speak for you, but personally, I’d rather gaze at something lovely – especially if it’s simultaneously God’s beauty and magically mine being transformed into something God-like.  That sounds a whole lot nicer than just trying hard to be “kind” and failing miserably and being mad at myself.
The good news is that that is what God calls us to do.  Jesus doesn’t say try harder.  He says, “look at me.”  ”Come with me.”  ”Go away by yourself to a lonely place and pour out  your heart to me.”  ”Gaze at me.”  ”See yourself as I see you.”  ”I am my lover’s and he is mine.”   Jesus calls us into a love affair not a guilt fest.  In effect, when we look in the mirror of the Bible we are to see, as so many have cried out, God’s face “smiling” at us.  Jesus is smiling at us.  That is what He wants us to see when we look in the mirror.
Jesus took the guilt for us on the cross so we can see only beauty when we look in the mirror.  He took the punishment for our imperfections, so when God looks at us He sees Christ’s perfection.  We and Christ have become one in a mysterious way.  It’s as if Christ offers us marriage, and all we have to say is: I do.
Why would we want to?  Because the key to remember is that it’s not a colorless humorless judge on the other side of the mirror, but instead a living breathing God of kindness and love.  How do we believe that?  How do we get that inside our resistant fearful heads?
Luckily, there is another helpful way in which Scripture acts as a mirror, here in Romans 2.  The Word of God shows us what other people look like, and then turns the mirror back on ourselves and reminds us we look the same.  For instance, in Romans 1, Paul lists every bad quality we can see in other people: “Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents.  They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.” Romans 1: 18-32. That’s how Romans 1 ends.
We can easily think of other people who are like that, and there’s this strange thing our hearts do.  When we see wickedness in others, we tend to judge and condemn them.  We turn into hyper critical security guards on the other side of two way mirrors.  That’s when Paul delivers the kicker in the opening sentence of Romans 2: “You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things.”  Romans 2:1.  Paul has done something that warms the cockles of a writer’s heart.  He uses story like a mirror to show our hearts the truth about ourselves.  Have a look at his list in the paragraph above.  Haven’t we all been heartless?  Haven’t we all broken promises?  Haven’t we all been guilty of greed, envy, quarreling or gossip?  Haven’t we all fallen short of the glory of God? Yes.
So here is where the switch happens.  We expect Paul to hone in on us with a lead-tipped whip and strike hard, and instead he gives us kindness.  He delivers one of my all time favorite lines: “Don’t you know that the kindness of God leads to repentance?”  Romans 2:4.
No, we think.  We didn’t know.  We don’t expect kindness for our flaws.  We expect condemnation. But God is kind in the face of our unkindness.  He is patient, long-suffering and forbearing.  And why does His kindness make us so very sorry?  I don’t know, but it does.  When we are unkind, and someone is kind back, it melts us.  We recognize that we don’t deserve kindness back, so when we get it, it’s as if we’re suddenly a small child again having a full blown tantrum and instead of being punished for kicking down every can in the grocery store, we’re being swept up in kind arms and embraced until our rage turns to tears.  When we look in a mirror and see perfection and know we fall short, we tend to condemn and judge ourselves.
But God’s mirror isn’t like ours.  When we look in God’s mirror, it’s kindness all the way through.  God’s word is a magical mirror that shows us as we really are; shows us other people as being neither better nor worse than us, but instead equally flawed; and shows us a God who loves everyone of us.  The more we can see clearly to the love of our God, the less dim our mirror becomes and the more brightly we can shine forth with the love of God making us radiant and transforming us into the beautiful person He calls us each to be.