How to Look Good Naked

While many self-loathing people might sign up for a reality show that promises makeover, I would be surprised to find people lined up for a self-acceptance experience that involves exposing your flaws and vulnerabilities to the world with no promise of ridding you of them. I wouldn’t do it. So I was pretty shocked by the audacity of this show “How to Look Good Naked” hosted by Carson Kressley. He basically takes women who hate their body and tries to convince them they’re beautiful—by having them get naked and unashamed.

I don’t like to be naked in public.

I guess that’s normal. I have a recurring dream about being naked on an elevated toilet in the middle of the mall food court. And there’s the one where I realize I’m naked in the middle of teaching a class. Vulnerability scares me. Even more than being physically exposed, I think I fear others seeing inside. I can turn deep shades of red just thinking about things I’ve said that may have exposed parts I try to keep hidden. I even go through and delete blog posts periodically when I’m feeling especially vulnerable and fear I may have taken too many layers off in something I’ve written. I’m very careful about what I let you see.

My friend recently said to me, “Let people feel the full weight of who you are,” and I can’t get over it. When I think about it, I’m filled with a million reasons why I should cover up instead—a million reasons why I shouldn’t let you see me naked. It makes me think about our fall and restoration. If, in the garden they were naked and unashamed, then does redemption involve ridding us of this shame that tells us to cover up the full weight of who we are? To stand naked and unashamed, I would have to have full confidence that what was exposed was acceptable—that I’m loved in spite of my damage from the fall. Is that the makeover God has in mind? Is that redemption?

As I was watching Carson gently convince women to take their clothes off, look in the mirror, and be photographed naked, my discomfort was growing. He told them they were beautiful and brought evidence to persuade them they were acceptable, until finally they seemed to trust him enough to take a risk and expose themselves. It reminded me of how I need to hear from God over and over that I am beautiful and acceptable—until finally I’ll risk exposure to let others experience the full weight of who I am. It seems to me that unconditional acceptance is the only thing that can convince us to take off the layers of striving and careful covering—it is the only thing that heals the wounds of shame.

Of course, I’m not suggesting we all become nudist—literally or figuratively. In fact, if the host were a straight man, I don’t think he could pull it off. I, for one, would assume ulterior motives. And the truth is, it’s not always safe to walk around naked in our fallen state. But if we never stand bare before God or others, we can never be fully known, and can never experience the balm of acceptance—we can never look good naked. We have to get naked to look good naked. And that is where redemption takes place.

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.” Soren Kierkegaard

Deep Down Things

THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins


I’m on a roll. Life has been going well for me lately. This isn’t a problem, per se, but I am starkly aware of my grasping desire to keep things going my way. This seems to mean living life on the surface in accordance with my safe and selfish imagination—I use work and achievement (smeared with toil) and entertainment to keep my soul at bay as it tries to come to life. I’ve been down this road before (have trod, have trod, have trod). It leads to death.

And yet, “there lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” My truer desire for something deeper and grander always returns—a desire for something better, more difficult, and more beautiful than my way.

As I was reading David Benner again yesterday morning I was struck by the truth in his words, “We will never come to prefer God’s kingdom and will to ours until we meet the Divine in this relationship of love intermixed with wonder… There would be no reason to submit our will to a tame god of our imagination. No god that is merely a projection of our deepest needs and longings is worthy of surrender of our soul. Surrendering to God’s will begins by encountering God’s grandeur. It also involves falling in love with God’s grand plan of restoration of all things. This lies at the heart of God’s will and God’s kingdom.”

This put me in mind of the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem.

May I be willing to exchange successful surface living for the grandeur of a Kingdom of restoration.  May I give up the god of my imagination for the God of wonder. Oh, morning!

Silence and Soul Cravings

I have just entered into a very busy season of life—maybe busier than any other time in my life. So, what has been on my mind lately is how discipline leads to rest. And beauty. And rightness. And all the things that feed my soul.

My tendency is to let life spin madly on and carry me away, and before I know it I don’t know who I am or where I’m going. But I need silence. And nature. And God. To remember. And discipline leads me there. Discipline (once hated as the end, now cherished as the means) allows me to pay attention to the soft, low sounds that can probe depths to awaken soul cravings. Like the sound of poetry.

I heard Mark Sayers speak recently, and as he read this poem aloud, I felt as if something that had died in me was being awakened with a gentle caress—as if something deep and beautiful and a little tragic, like my favorite novel, was coming to life. And it filled me with a new and urgent desire for silence, so I could hear more of the same.


In The World of Whispers - Cam Semmens

There is a serpent in the speakers
of my TV,
radio,
laptop,

phone.

I can hear its hiss

running beneath every

show,

song,

clip,
chat.

Thiss hissssss –
a subtle, insistent whisper:

…buy, buy,
buy an ipod, buy an MG,
buy a PC, buy an Apple
and you will be like God,
buy, buy…

And I – too late – feel the fangs
pierce the thin skin of my will.
And I can feel the venom
poisoning
every choice I make,

…buy, buy…

but I
lie as still as I can.
Still.
Still listening.
Listening
for that other whisper –
that still, small voice.

Cameron M. Semmens

Charlotte Bronte, Anne Rice, and Dissevering Christianity

I decided that I needed to return to a classic this week after spending last week trying to figure out the mania behind the Twilight saga (which I determined comes down to the proverbial human longing for some hip, ethereal being to find us irresistible in spite of our obvious frailty and imperfection). So, I picked up Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre today because, although I have already read it twice, after twelve years I only recall that I liked it. Turns out, I really like it.

When it was first published, critics called it anti-Christian. In the preface to the second edition Charlotte Bronte addresses those “in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong” to remind them that speaking out against Christianity is not equal to speaking out against Christ. She says,

“To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns… appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is – I repeat it – a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

“The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth – to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines.”

Have things changed so little since 1847? In so many ways, Christianity is still wrapped up in human doctrine and appearance all blended together with the creeds of Christ, and we have such difficulty separating them. I often equate pleasing the Christian subculture with pleasing Christ. But it is not so. Yet it’s so hard to separate that subculture from the world-redeeming creed of Christ.

It all reminds me of Anne Rice’s decision recently to disassociate from Christianity because of all the hypercritical, politicized ideas that have become a part of Christian subculture. She doesn’t want all the extra stuff. She just wants to follow Christ. I get that.

Sometimes, it feels to me that the only way to really separate Christian subculture, with all its narrow human doctrine and appearance, from the world-redeeming creed of Christ is to withdraw from the Church completely so that the simplicity of the gospel doesn’t get mixed in with all the rest. Yet, I’m convinced that we need each other, and so I can’t leave, messy as it may be to be part of a family, and as much as I get sucked into their ways; as much as I’m often embarrassed by them. It’s my family.

So I guess all I can do is continue spending my days trying to dissever that which has been enmeshed with Christ’s redemptive message ever since he came, ironically, to free us from all the extra stuff. I needed Bronte to put words to it for me, but that’s what I’ve been working at for some time now. That’s what she did with her novel, Jane Eyre.  That's why this novel has so much more significance to me now than when I studied it in school.  Now I understand the author.


article on Anne Rice

Don Miller comments on Anne Rice

To help with the dissevering

Avoid Rain: Be Good?

It has taken me 33 years to learn that pain in life is a given. And even still, I have to constantly relearn it as I find myself trying to escape from anything painful or disappointing. I blame Disney, really. I think Disney movies set us up for disappointment (with the exception of The Journey of Natty Gann and The Fox and the Hound which are unnecessarily painful). We’re left to believe that if Walt Disney were in charge of the world, it would be a much happier place. But we’ve got this God guy in charge who seems to value pain as much as pleasure (if not more).

Still, I got the idea from the God-followers that I could actually avoid pain by following a simple formula: if you keep from being human, you can keep from being hurt. In other words, rain only falls on the broken so don’t be broken. Keep it all together and pain won’t knock at your door. Or, you reap what you sow, so be a good girl.

Maybe there’s some truth there (like 2%), but it sets us up with a Disney-esque purpose in life: be good, avoid pain, live happily ever after. And it contradicts the words of Christ, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous,” and, of course, Bono’s paraphrase, “Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel, luckily.”

The consequence of this formula, I think, is that at some point in life (I am a slow learner) we realize that very often life sucks whether we’re good or bad, and we feel we’ve been hoodwinked by the God-followers who promised that everything would work out fine. We think God didn’t hold up his part of the bargain—he must not be good like Walt Disney.

I admit, I’m disappointed with God. I didn’t get the life I wanted. And I was good. The formula failed me. So, now I keep trying to reprogram from Walt-philosophy to a philosophy that allows for my humanity and the complexity of a life with pain and pleasure and brokenness.

Blaise Pascal said, "Two things contribute to our sanctification. Pains and pleasures." Could it be that happiness and pain-avoidance are not the purpose of life? Maybe the journey of sanctification—the journey of knowing our true selves by knowing the true God—is the point. Maybe I can’t protect myself from pain (even by being good) and maybe I’m not supposed to.

"The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed." Frederick Buechner

courting youth

sorry if I encroach but you smell like youth
so I want to lean in and
keep moving in to breathe you in
to catch it through contagion as you speak

and breathe on me

as your dreams all spill out

over laughter and meals and your green ideals

though I know I can’t stay

but maybe just for today I’ll pretend so

I can spend this hour

letting you get under my skin

you should know this may hurt
but I need you to bleed
a little hope onto me and a little carefree
a little reckless spontaneity
just a drop or two of what I used to be before
this compulsory vaccine called life
got to me

Reflections at a Wedding

I miss the beauty of unblemished hope

where fewer slowing shoulds interrupted

the fast flow of could

and all was youth

drifting

drowning

in forever

where we played and planned

lifetimes of lying together
even in fabled fields of trouble
together
days of white and spring and cherry blossoms
that would never die

never

until they did
when all the why's came one day
and took it all away
replaced by something more profound
but less hope and less white
where cherry blossoms die
and love is tempered in
calming seas of good and right

and where I wonder if I’ll ever drown again