LTK Update 2004

July, 2004
To: Extraordinary friends
From: Esther Meek
Re: Longing to Know

Sensing Future Possibilities
On July 29 the Meeks leave St. Louis, the town of Jeff Dare the auto mechanic, copperheads and surprise lilies, and many dear friends and sights now word-preserved in LTK. Moving disorients, as we tear up lived subsidiaries and only slowly come to indwell others. But it is the risky resolve that unlocks fresh vistas of reality.

Please note our new address: 131 Cottonwood, Aliquippa, PA 15001. Tentative phone #: 724-378-0872. Our home is located just off US 60, midway between Pittsburgh and Beaver Falls, and 15 minutes from the Pittsburgh airport—strategic, we hope, for connecting with you, and for inviting new friends into conversation.

My fall classes begin August 30. I teach Intro to Philosophy, Reformed Epistemology, and Kant, and participate in a team-taught Humanities course. LTK will be assigned in the first two. In the Intro class, I plan to have students use its questions to shape their assigned philosophy journaling. My colleagues encourage me to use summers and breaks to write and speak, and now also to acquaint others with Geneva College.

Esther at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
June 18 I had the privilege to be scholar-in-residence for a day at RZIM in Atlanta. I spent 10 hours with Ravi’s staff, including International Director Stewart McAllister, Research Assistant Danielle DuRant, Betsy Childs, Correspondence Assistant, and Bill Smith of On the Way Ministries. (Ravi proves more elusive than my auto mechanic!) They had studied LTK and other work of mine in preparation.

Their intense interest and delight encouraged me, and I am honored to have aided their worldwide initiatives and made new friends. Later, Bill wrote: “I had a lunch appointment today with a professional coach who I introduced to your model of knowing.” And Betsy wrote that she appreciated the application of focal and subsidiary to the distinction that often stymies Christians, between legalism (fixating on what should be subsidiary) and obedience (living the subsidiaries to focus on God). She wrote: “I will highly recommend your book to friends; I hope we meet again.”

LTK and Calling
I applied the themes of LTK to the area of personal calling at a June seminar at Grace and Peace Church in St. Louis. I found it surprisingly challenging as I realized in a fresh way the mystery of knowing that vectors us from that which we cannot fully identify toward that which only partly reveals itself. Along the way we get only glimpses of our calling, the unique manner in which we engage the world.

A new thought: We human knowers anchor above, not below (the Batman, not the Ninja, St. Louisans!). The stillest point of the vector of our lives is the focal: that for which we long, and by which we navigate--ultimately, God. There is also a proximal still point, a “from” anchor, but it is the balanced centering characteristic of dancing. These two points orient the vector of our engaging the world.

Just before the talks, I finished Dan Allender’s The Healing Path. Dan expresses evocatively the struggle to engage the world that is longing to know. Savor this sentence of his: “We are to move toward reality, but we can’t go the whole distance; truth must come to us.…We must stretch out our arms to life, but God arrives when he wills.”

LTK at TOPC
The last night of June I finished my last St. Louis-side engagement, a 3-Wednesday series at my home church, Twin Oaks Presbyterian. What a privilege to share my proposals with my church family, people aged 20 to 80, with whom I have worshipped for over a decade. So many of LTK’s illustrations concerned people they knew. Their laughter and support meant the world.

A Good First Year for Longing to Know
Brazos Press is optimistic that LTK will sell through its first printing of 3500 copies in its first year! Thank you so much for making this happen—purchasing the book, recommending it to others, hosting me to speak, offering support and wise counsel. I remain passionate concerning the importance of helping people think about knowing.

Know that your friendship steadies me as I unlock the future and wonder what real I have invited in through the door. Bless you.

Esther