Which Wardrobe?

Most people know that I'm very proud of the fact that I'm an official tour guide for Aslan's How - which is my fancy way of saying Dr. G let me help give tours of his amazing house. I got to do the coolest part of the tour where you actually walk through the wardrobe. I got giddy every time. It's so much fun to take people through the house and point out all the fun Narnia items and talk about one of my favorite authors.

I've loved Lewis since I was in first grade when my dad read The Chronicles of Narnia to me (but you already knew that if you read my previous Narnia related blog post). I loved Lewis so much that when I was in high school, Wheaton College was my top choice for school for one simple reason - they are home to the largest collection of works by and about Lewis in the world. Ultimately, I decided that I should probably look at the educational offerings of colleges as well and ended up at a different school.

For the first time ever, I actually got to see this amazing collection when I visited the Marion E. Wade Center on Wheaton's campus. I had some free time and got a couple girls to come along with me to the small museum that honors Lewis and six other great writers. In their one room museum they have a fancy wardrobe (that is not nearly as nice or easily entered as the one at Dr. G's) along with Tolkien's old writing desk. Naturally these were exciting things, but the wardrobe didn't lead anywhere. To the left, however, there was a door that led me into a whole new world.

I entered the reading room, and with overwhelming joy and excitement completed the form to be allowed to take journals off the shelf to read what others had written about Lewis and leaf through extensive photo copies of his personal correspondence. The girl at the desk in the reading room was also a big fan of Lewis and she showed me where all the different journals and dissertations were. I spent the next hour and a half reading abstracts from dissertations of people who thought critically about the works I hold so dear. I even found a great paper comparing Gollum and Grendel based on Tolkien's criticism of Beowulf. There were literary critics looking at Lewis's representation of Cupid and Psyche and theologians examining his soteriology. I could have spent days reading the amazing criticism, but I moved on to skimming the scans of Boxen, the stories about talking animals which Lewis wrote with his brother as a kid. The sweet girl who showed me around had to come up to me after what only felt like a moment to tell me that I had to go because they were closing for the evening.

As I walked back out of the door, it felt like my bittersweet return to Britain from Narnia. For a brief moment, I was in a place where people were excited to engage critically with the ideas of a brilliant writer, and I could listen to what they had to say by reading their dissertations. I crave those conversations, and it was so refreshing to be alone with those texts that had a plethora of interesting ideas. I realized, though, that while I may not ever get to go back to read those dissertations, I'll get to go to a place that looks a lot more like Narnia in just a couple weeks. And Lewis related or not, I'll be able to have amazing conversations with people who are excited about the same things I am.

At dinner tonight, I had a great conversation about literary theory with a girl going to teach in Bolivia. We shared books we loved and talked about the great texts that had made us cry because they were written so well. Not only that, but before I even went to the Wade Center this afternoon, I got to talk about Toni Morrison's character development with another new English teacher at BFA. I am so excited about these people who I am going to be working with in the fall.

[Transition to significantly less nerdy content.]

Some of you may have spent the last few paragraphs wondering why I'm even on Wheaton's campus. Even more of you likely will never make it this far in the blog post because you gave up on me after the first two paragraphs of excessive literary content. For those who stayed strong to get to this events based update, I sincerely thank you. I recognize that I can get carried away with my English nerd excitement, and I genuinely try to reign it in often. In fact, after my last post I joked with a friend about making all of my posts allusions to a work of literature; while this post does, in fact, have a high literary content, I promise not to make every post connected to a book.

Back to the question: Why am I at Wheaton? Well, this week is the TeachBeyond orientation for all new candidates going overseas in the fall. I'm here to learn all about cultural transitions and TCKs and insurance. Oh my! It's been so amazing to meet people going to schools all around the globe, and especially to spend time getting to know some of the people I'll be working with at BFA. I may have seemed excited about going to Germany before, but my excitement as more than doubled after meeting these people and hearing parts of their stories.

I'll be back in Portland on Saturday, and I'll be just a month away from my goal move date. I'm still only at 45% of my funds, so please be praying that the rest of my monthly support will come in quickly.

I Volunteer as Tribute!

Bear with me, I'll bring this one around, but read through the story first:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;

    the whole earth is full of his glory.”

 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

He said, “Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;

    be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’

Make the heart of this people calloused;

    make their ears dull

    and close their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

    hear with their ears,

    understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.”

Then I said, “For how long, Lord?”

And he answered:

“Until the cities lie ruined

    and without inhabitant,

until the houses are left deserted

    and the fields ruined and ravaged,

until the Lord has sent everyone far away

    and the land is utterly forsaken.

And though a tenth remains in the land,

    it will again be laid waste.

But as the terebinth and oak

    leave stumps when they are cut down,

    so the holy seed will be the stump in the land."

(Isaiah 6 NIV)

Clearly my call was much less dramatic - although it did involve a dramatic teenager saying some hurtful things that forced me to reevaluate my effectiveness as a youth leader. However, as fascinating as that story is, it's not what prompted me to title this post with an allusion to The Hunger Games. Instead, I'm drawn to the connotation of the word "tribute" and how it's connected to Isaiah's call. Tribute is literally the thing given as an offering to someone. (Offering's a weird word too; it's a gift given to someone way more important than you.) When Katniss volunteers as tribute, she is the offering. She stands up to say that her life will be given completely and fully to the Capitol. When Isaiah says he's volunteering, he's giving his whole life as an offering to the Lord (just as Paul commands in Romans).

Let's look a little deeper in to Katniss's decision though: when she stands up to take Primrose's place, she becomes the gift from the whole district to the Capitol. Katniss made the decision, but the whole community sent her. She shouts the memorable line of her own accord, but it's the district that takes credit for her when she shows up in the games. She's the girl from District 12.

Here's where I come in (thanks for your patience). I am standing up and volunteering my life as tribute; it's the gift. However, I'm not going on my own - I'm being sent by the church. The leadership and members of Westport are sending me with excitement as I move forward to serve in Germany, but they are not the only ones. I had the honor of being sent out by the Embassy in Denver this Sunday, and I can't begin to describe the joy I felt to have Cheri and Jacquie wrap their arms around me as Brandon prayed over me.

(I'm going to deviate from The Hunger Games for a minute, but I'll bring it back.) This family I have at the Embassy is amazing. These people spent time with me for a week last summer, and the whole Westport team bonded with everyone we met way deeper than a summer camp pen pals way. These people are my family. I came home and told everyone about how blessed I was by the experience of serving alongside these people in Denver (I also raved about the love of my life, Elijah, who is the cutest one-year-old on the planet). You may be able to imagine how excited I was when my parents agreed to visit the Embassy with me a couple weeks ago while they were in Colorado at the same time as I was. (Well, in order to appreciate my excitement, you should know I'm quite fond of my parents, and I really do enjoy sharing the important things in my life with them.)

Talking to my mom tonight, she told me how much she enjoyed meeting my Embassy family. She also told me how real and genuine she felt her interactions with them were in the brief amount of time she spent with them. There was no need for fake pleasantries when my families met. I love that that's the way the body of Christ works because I feel as close to my Embassy family as I do to my Westport family, and my mom and dad are part of that as well.

Because of that deep family connection, when I stood up and shouted, "I volunteer as tribute!" to God (or whatever version of "Here I am, send me!" I actually articulated) Westport and the Embassy stood with me to send me out. And before my metaphor breaks down because I'm not being sent to a televised battle of children killing each other, I'll finish with this thought: Katniss didn't volunteer for the fame or the glory; she just stepped up to do what was right for her to do.

I'm not planning to start a political revolution (though I'm not opposed to sparking a spiritual revival - I'll expect you to call me the Girl on Fire if I do), but I am doing something I find pretty scary because it's what I'm supposed to do. Katniss was protecting her sister; I'm obeying the Lord by volunteering for a position that he has equipped me to do (apparently not everyone is excited by grammar - it's my mission to intervene in the lives of freshmen at BFA to demonstrate how fun complex sentence structures can be). I am still amazed at how well the Lord has equipped me for this position, but it shouldn't surprise me when I see how perfectly he prepared Isaiah for his mission. Before Isaiah even volunteered, the Lord gave him clean lips to speak his message, and before I stepped up to teach overseas, the Lord gave me passion for students and understanding of grammar.