Life at the edge of chaos

"Chaos often breeds life when order breeds habit.''
Henry Brooks Adams

"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.''
Henry Miller

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over.  Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Over the last few weeks I have felt repeatedly drawn into more and more seemingly chaotic human dramas, and I've wondered why.  Why would I find myself consistently getting more deeply involved in situations that appear so hopeless on the surface, and that are so dramatic and hurtful?  Am I a glutton for punishment?  Do I have a savior complex? Am I re-creating old wounds of my own in order to heal them?  I've asked myself all of these questions and many more, tormenting myself with the question, "What's 'wrong' with me that this is happening?"  Yesterday morning, in the midst of several powerful conversations, - one with a client/friend in Austin who I seem to both intrigue and trouble in some way, another with the grandfather of my Little Brother, Brandon, about some of his most recent antics, and one with a client/friend in The Woodlands who called me for real-time coaching in the midst of a particularly troubling interpersonal crisis - God revealed the answer, and it was so simple, and it's left me with such a warm feeling of peace.  I am doing this work, which involves confronting what might seem like chaos,  because He has prepared me for that and has brought these situations to me to for me to serve His purpose.  In doing so, He has not fully explained that purpose, nor has He waited until I was "ready" for it; He has used me, "flaws and all."  In fact, I suspect that my flaws and weaknesses have been particularly useful.  :-)  I am learning that Life, and God, come more fully alive and real right out there on the edge of this chaos, those places I've always been encouraged to avoid at all costs because, "you can die out there."  I've learned that the opposite is really true - that Divine Order lives in the very midst of this chaos - that you can experience Life out there on the edge and see things that you completely lose sight of in the artificial comfort and habit of what only seems orderly.  Is this not what you were talking about in your Vietnam story, B.E.?  And is this not what those of you who have had near-death experiences have told me about recently?

Just as I was writing the above, and while on the phone with the third of the two men I referred to above, he mentioned to me that he had just read two chapters of The Message (a modern-day translation of the Bible) that had particularly moved him.  They were chapters 58 & 59 of Isaiah.  I opened my copy of the book (a gift he gave me so that I could keep up with his progress) and turned to chapter 58, and my eyes landed immediately on the following passage:

"If you get rid of unfair practices, ... quit blaming others, ... quit gossiping about others' sins, 
If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourself to the down and out, 
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.  I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places - firm muscles, strong bones.
You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuilding the foundations from out of your past.
You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
Make the community livable again."

That's the work I'm being called to do - to step outside of my own comfort zone (without "going over" the edge), to meet life (and its "chaos") head-on, doing my part, even in my human frailty and weakness, to help make the world livable again, by helping Divine Order be more visible to more human beings just like me every day, always starting with myself.