Peace

(Valerie wrote this item on Peace a couple of months ago.)

Do you know what it’s like to be at peace with yourself? To really, honestly know peace? It’s what we’re about every…making peace with ourselves, trying to get our current demons to get along with our old demons and play nice. We wrongly think that peace is the moment that the demons place nice, and there is quiet. This is the painful quiet of held breaths, not the soft quiet of the pre-dawn, full of life and energy and expectancy. This is not the certainty that though there are many things wrong with this world, they are not wrong with me today.

To be at real peace is not the same as to have called a truce. A truce is merely some agreement we come to with our demons to satiate them temporarily, but peace is the remove them fully and entirely from the battle.

When I was younger, I would listen to others talk about having peace, and I would think I wished could have that, but that could never be me; there’s way too much battle in me.

One day I looked into my own face and I was no longer a stranger to my own eyes. I know who I was: saint and sinner, hero and villain, and I gnosko peace.

Words

Words

Words are very important to me. God knows this about me, and He prepared for me a husband who was good at sharing words with me. I found my soul mate in a man who believes that words are powerful and well used words are life-altering and soul-healing, and misused words are life-crushing and soul-wounding.

But to him, the spoken word is penultimate. He felt that you lived and died by speech; were accepted or rejected according to what you said. Every word was weighed, every sentence parsed, even his own.

Not so for me. Certainly, the spoken word is significant, but words on the tongue are fleeting, becoming distant memories or misshapen monsters haunting the closets of the mind. The written word held more sway in my soul, brought more joy to my heart and more satisfaction to my intellect. I could count on it not to change, not to argue back, but to be there when I needed its encouragement, its wisdom or its escape. When I did not have knowledge necessary for living because no one had spoken the knowledge to me, I knew that I could find the knowledge written down somewhere. I felt that anything I could ever want to learn could be found in a book.

Isn’t that what the Scriptures are? Indeed, God’s infinite love and wisdom give direction for our lives by His written word. Any moral or spiritual question we have, God has graciously given us a place to turn to find His heart, His mind and His will. I might here note that the church I first attended when I became a Christian supported this world view, and by extension, this God view.

But I always felt behind, that I wasn’t learning fast enough, and that others did not lack the learning and wisdom I was still looking for. I felt perpetually left out, as though there were some secret that others were keeping from me.

So what was I missing? Were others reading books I hadn’t read? That seemed an unlikely option, since I was, by far, the most voracious reader I had met or heard of. Were they understanding more of what they read than I was? This too seemed unlikely. No matter where I looked, I could not find answers, or finding them, I was not open to seeing.

It wasn’t until years after I was married to a godly man who cherished the spoken word that it dawned on me. God hadn’t stopped at the written word to guide us. He had also provided the Living Word through His Son, Jesus, as an example we could look to, and had followed that by providing His Spirit to live within us and ‘speak’ God’s teachings directly to our minds and souls. And most amazing, He gave us each other to give each other the words of His heart. He gives us the opportunity to use our words to heal the wounds of others, both within His family and outside it.

I learned that it is good to value the spoken word. And it is good to value the written word. And it is infinitely better to value them both. And I learned that there is much more to words than writing or speaking. Words can be lived out in our lives, in our hearts. All these things work together, through His people, to make us righteous, which is to be at peace with God.

There is no end to my enjoyment of writing in its many shapes and styles. But I did not truly grow and heal within until I understood the place of spoken words in the Christian’s life. The written word has a special place, to be sure, but not a solitary position as I had thought. Although the spoken word does tend to pass, and the written word does tend to endure (until it’s burned, lost or thrown away), what will outlast them both is us. Words write themselves on souls, whether for good or evil, and the soul is eternal. And so, whatever form our words take, whether written, spoken or lived in silence, may they always be words that reconcile enemies into brothers,that heal deep wounds and tell the broken and scarred that they are beautiful.

Valerie R. Yarbro 2008

Valerie On God's Love

Valerie, along with some friends, gives thoughts on God's love and why we reject it.

Listen to the Sound File - God's Love

More of the dog I love. Fetch, this time.

Valerie The Linguist

Valerie loves linguistics. To Valerie, how language flexes in and out of our minds is facinating. We hope you don't find this joke too "punishing."

The Dog I Love

This is Biblo, my dog. We love to play a game of chase with one of his 3 favorite toys.

Movies I Recommend.

And Movies You Must See

Disclaimer: I won't lie to you, this is not a kid-safe list. And some are rated R. Here's what I have to say about movies I recommend that are rated 'R.' Most people's real lives are not rated 'PG' or even 'PG-13.' Most people's lives are really rated 'NC-17' or worse. As a result, many of the best movies which say something significant and realistic about our world are rated R. So, I have made a list of movies I have enjoyed. Don't misunderstand, there are probably foul words, sex scenes, betrayals, violence, imprudence, death and myriad other offensive things.

There is a practical note here. Both with people and movies, I believe it is important to look for the redeemable in the midst of ugliness. Does your life come with a 'G' rating? If, as a Christian, you are offended by messiness, sex, language and general "ick" in most people's lives, and you close yourself from it, you will have closed yourself off from all the wounded and searching people around you whose lives are filled to the brim with offensive things.

• Finding Neverland - a trip inside my mind
• Gattaca - a real thinker about our genetic future, on the lines of 'Brave New World' and '1984' and just as disturbing. if you aren't disturbed by the end, you weren't paying attention. A very good film.
• The Missing - remarkable story of people, and it shows a spirit world & world view that we do not naturally understand today
• Enigma - communicating with intelligence...and a great love story.
• Proof - insanity is not always what it appears to be, and sometimes the 'normal' one has the biggest issues
• Swinging Doors - we do not really control our destiny
• The Body - made me root for a priest - brilliant intellectual discussion of need for Christ's resurrection
• The Order - one of the darker movies on the list (has icky violence stuff....you've been warned), but what a discussion of expiation of sin. of course, i don't believe it is true expiation, but it is quite the discussion starter - you may want to follow this movie with 'The Last Sin Eater' (which has none of the icky violence stuff, but won't be put on my actual list because it really isn't a make you squirm and think and squirm and think kind of movie)
• Kolya - yep, there's a sex scene...get over it. if you always wanted to know what we loved about Czech, watch this film.
• Billy Elliot - lots of swearing with English accents...otherwise it's a touching movie about the passion of a boy for something extraordinary
• Taps - the innocent often suffer consequences they did not cause
• I am David - exceptional adaptation of a 'must read' novel
• I am Legend - redemption
• Bruce Almighty - Hilarius AND some good theological discussion points.
• Nightmare Before Christmas - good intentions poorly executed...aka my life in spooky animation. seriously, though, this is the embodiment of people doing what they are programmed to do, which is what we all do; we do what we know (and these guys 'know' Halloween).
• Martian Child
• Immortal Beloved - Shows the genius and tragedy of Beethoven.
• The Ghost and the Darkness - Great action film set in beautiful Africa---AND A TRUE STORY.
• Blessed Art Thou - This may very well offend your theological sensibilities, but look past that to the deeper heart of the film. What is faith? What is love? What does God want from us?

If you haven't already, please read the disclaimer at the top of this post.