Sheepdog

I knew someone who once said, if Jesus is the 'Good Shepherd', we should be sheepdogs. This is an excellent metaphor if you think it through.

In order of existence, no human could be equal with God, so an 'animal is to human as human is to God' analogy works well to describe humans. Not to mention that anthropomorphism has always been used to cast a spotlight on aspects of human nature.

Dogs are familiar animals. They are well adapted...actually bred by humans to be companions and assistants to humans. Our two biological paths are intertwined nearly as far back as we can trace. If there is any one animal that would best represent our existence in relation to God's on our own level, I think it would be a dog. They understand us, though not completely. They trust, but think for themselves. They are dependent on us, but capable of surviving alone if conditions are right...though even then, mostly still adjunct to humanity. Few stray dogs actually go wild like, say, a cat might. They are moldable into various behaviors and modes of being...that is, trainable.

Beyond this, dogs exhibit some of the best qualities in humans. Loyalty, affection, devotion, service, selflessness, altruism, etc.

So to extend into the realm of sheepdogs, they go where the shepherd commands. They hear his voice and they know their job. They encircle the sheep and keep them safe. They are extensions of the shepherd, but he is the head. They serve with joy and abandon, because the tasks they perform are what they were bred for. It is instinctual, though it must be refined by training.

They respond only to the Shepherd and will not deviate from his commands, though they are free and unleashed to adapt to their work as they see fit. They also thrive on the praise and affection of the Shepherd and seek no other reward.

This is what I want to be. This is largely how I feel. Deep down, I honestly don't care for status and accomplishments, career, etc. I just want to do what brings me and others joy and have enough to be sufficient. I want to be free to lay at my master's feet and feel his touch. and when he speaks to me, I want ot respond instantly.

I find this metaphor especially strong in the service I do with children. I find it sheer joy to play with them, to let them be children with me. I would sooner die than have any harm fall to any one of them. But I know the bounds they must have and I am not shy about enforcing those disciplinary boundaries for the sheeps' own good. Better a nip or bark from me than a greater harm that they can't see. I will not allow a sheep to mislead the others and I am fiercely protective of them against any wolves. I know my master's voice and his commands to me and I will obey them until I am called off by him alone.

I hope to be a good sheepdog.

Church

This is a difficult topic for me right now. I just read a book that was ironically recommended by a pastor friend. The book comes from a movement of reformers that are a little over 20 years old. They believe that the modern popular expression of church is flawed at the root and should therefore be done away with in favor of something strictly Biblically based. It goes by different names depending on the flavor of the group. I've heard the arguments before for most of it, but some of this book's arguments are really resonating with me and I'm not sure how that will play out.

I've had a problem with the dry knowledge-based church style. It is dead and changes very little of very few people. I've been involved in charismatic-tilted church and seen the personality cults, the blind devotion to 'signs & wonders' and even those who move across the country repeatedly, chasing the latest 'move'. I've been in the growth-based seeker-church and seen the blatant marketing principles applied and worked on people as if God were a Ad Exec. I'm sorry, when textbook marketing gets butts in your seats, you can't call that God.

I've even been involved in home churches that were cloisters of ungrounded, disenfranchized people who just thought they could do it as well as anyone else...who needs the regular stuff, we'll make our OWN church. And the converse where they think all who meet in buildings are apostate servants of the antichrist.

I've also been involved in radical dregs of the earth ministry church that goes in deep and helps people who couldn't even begin to set foot in traditional churches. And there I've seen the hurt create cliquishness and let's just face it, damaged people do damage. When your whole church is made up of people with serious issues, those issues will play out.

Not that all of these things were all bad. I've seen people's lives changed. I've seen transformations and real moves of God. But I tend to think these things are in spite of and not because of the church structure. Afterall, we're all flawed people. Can we really expect our organizations to not be flawed? This is the conclusion I'd come to and lived under for years.

But then, somewhere deep inside me, I've never been able to shake this small voice, almost too hard to hear, calling out for something more. Longing for a group to share my life with...not a life group or some other forced approximation, but a real connection. A community to live into and to raise my child in. A group like Bunyan's troop making their way along the road in the footsteps of Christian. A group where strong faith carries weaker, where helpfulness arises, where there is a palpable realness of spiritual unity. How do I know this exists?

It's in the New Testament. It's in Bunyan's work. I've even experienced it myself...no really, I have. Not for long, but there was a time and a group, several of whom I am still deeply connected to. For a time, we were a real community. Flawed, yes. But there was a real unity that is beyond human ability. It wasn't just a Sunday thing, or a semester study group. These people were brothers and sisters and we shared everything! Not like some hippie commune, but our lives were a part of each other entirely. Our worship, our problems, our challenges, sicknesses, jobs, marriages, social circles, were all intertwined in this group. It was Holy.

But then it ended. Perhaps we tried too hard. Perhaps we tried to do too much. Perhaps we fell victim to the insidious attacks of an enemy that would do anything to bring down that kind of unity. Honestly, I don't care what happened. I don't want that group back. It ended for good reason. But I do want that reality back. THAT I can't let go of. I wanted to spend my life in that.

Every church before or sense has been ok for a time, and then turns miserable. Something just eats it up. The common denominator here is me. So I have tried to change myself and as hard as it has been, as unnatural as it has been, I have been making progress. But then on the heels of a visible, palpable "issue" at my church, there comes this book. And as critically as I have taken it, as much as I have checked references and confirmed his Greek and sniped his logical fallacies, there is a piercing dart of truth in it that echoes across all of what has been good in church in my life.

I feel like Lucy who has just seen Aslan go left when Peter (human authority) and the group (the majority) go right, saying she is a silly little girl. If I don't run after Him, will it be on my head? I know what I saw! I know what I want! Is this the path to it?

My heart beats at my ribs screaming, "YES, YES, YES, for the love of God THIS is it!" But I distrust me heart. It is easily enticed away by sirens who echo what it wants to hear. I have to go down this path, but I will go slowly. God forgive me for it. I want to abandon myself to the current that I know is true, but must test, must know it is the right stream first.

Please God, pull my foot from under me and I will go headlong n spite of myself!

Impermanence

This is a concept I have never quite grasped. I get the idea on the surface. We die, things decay. We are not permanent. But what is? Love? No, we like to say that in romantic ways, but it isn't true. The truth is, I don't have anything in my experience that is permanent, none of us do. Therefore, I can't understand it really. But I can take clues from my experiences and infer what permanence must be like.

Still, even this inference has always alluded me...the images of perishable and imperishable, of type and archetype, or ideals, of illusions, they all fell flat in some way. But recently, I was rereading something my teacher, Jack, wrote and it fell into place.

Every bit of our existence is composed of atoms, of motion and energy and space. These things do not sit static. They are constantly turning over. We borrow them for a while and then they are released again. This matter is part of the whole of the universe. To bring it to a more human, observable level, my cells are constantly dividing, constantly being replaced. The building blocks for that replacement are received through food, which comes at the expense of some other creature's life. I injest its matter to make more of my own, which is then lost through skin replacement, blood cell recycling, waste, and replenished again through food and sun and complex relations with microscopic organisms and larger organisms. All of what is physically me at this moment will not be me in several years, it will be something else. And what will be me then is something else now. I am not solid. I am a constant flux of matter and energy over the duration of my existence. All things are.

Upon realizing this, it was like Neo seeing the matrix code actively transpiring through the world around him. He had seen through the illusion of it. I am not a constant thing. I have never been and will never be in this life. Nor is anything around me. All things are flux and change, even those that seem permanent, are merely constant reconstructions of the same structure moving through time. As Jack says, I am the curve of a waterfall. It seems solid, shaped, but is actually made up of a constant torrent of water droplets replacing the ones that just passed at such a speed that it seems to hold a shape and a place.

This is impermanence.

To follow the metaphor, something more solid, more permanent, can actually reach into a waterfall and pass through it...this is a new thought...so if Jesus gives us a glimpse into that permanent humanity after His resurrection: He passes through space and time. He appears in a locked room. Therefore His body must be more permanent than space and time. A less permanent object can't pass through a more permanent one. A vapor or thin paper is dispelled by the waterfall, only something more solid can pass through it! Wow!