Un"traditional"

Christmas is always a very reflective time for me.  I despise the hokey cheer and even more the consumerism packaged as love and friendship.  To me this is not Christmas.  It might be for some people, but I wish they would just call it something else and leave my holy day to me and those who want to keep it.

This is why I don't get bent about people saying Merry Christmas or celebrating other holidays, even the made up ones.  Great.  If you don't believe what I believe then stop getting in the way.

I don't understand how...no I do understand.  I was going to say I don't get how things get passed off as part of Christmas that have nothing to do with it, but I get that and don't want to belabour it.

Instead I want to focus on what it means to me.  I don't pretend that this is some historically accurate date, or even that it wasn't placed on this date that coincided with other cultural holidays.  That doesn't change what I celebrate.

I think of a young tradesman, struggling with the stigma of a used wife, the scandal of someone else's baby.  The young woman thought to be unfaithful.  The oppressive politics of the day.  The long trip.  He couldn't leave her, legally because she was his wife and had to register too, ethically because she might have the baby any time, and morally because people were judging them.  I think of the frustration at finding no place in such need.

I think of the innkeeper who found what space he could for them.

I think of the birth, alone.  No midwife or doctor.  Did they know what to do?  Had someone prepped them before the trip, just in case?  Even knowing who the child was, doesn't wipe out human fears and concerns.  I've been in many cases where I knew God told me to be, but I had no idea how it was going to work out.

I think of the stable, how God would be born amongst livestock.  He a sheep for slaughter, himself.  I know the smells of livestock, and it can be a comforting smell of genuineness and peace...you don't understand until you've been around it for a while.  I can imagine the animals there yielding their worship to him.  Helping in their way.  Of course I don't think they did anything anthropomorphic, but I have watched creation bend and serve God.  How much more in this instance!

I think mostly of shepherds, living apart from the hustle of life and culture.  The abiding goodness that tends to grow in people like this, even as their roughness and uneducation makes them seem backward and undesirable to many.  It is a subculture of its own.  I think of their excitement.  I wonder who stayed behind with the sheep while the others ran to find the child.  I think how they are the most unlikely herald: the least likely to be believed by the educated, yet the least likely of all to lie about it or spin it.

I think of times when God has broken through my reality and blazed in front of me.  How much more in this setting!

I think of the gift that this was.  For the limitless God, the moving creating breath of God Himself to shed it all and be confined to the most helpless state of a helpless creature.  I think of what this means in the fabric of the universe.  I think of what this means to my life.

I have had real living experience of this person, this God.  And to know that this same person did these things for me is stilling, overwhelming, emotional.

It makes all the traditions of our culture meaningless at this time.  I don't care for trees or decorations or feasts or treats or gifts or family time or warm memories.  I want to slip off into the night and stare at the sky and let the moment of this event flood all over me.  I can't truly help it anyway.  It keeps flooding in even if I don't want it to.

So when you see me at this time of year you'll know why I'm quiet, why my eyes seem wetter than normal, why I keep slipping away to private places, staring out windows.  This is my Christmas.  And you're welcome to share it with me.

You can keep the rest of it.  I have no use for it.

Through the Roof

In common usage, this phrase means something other than what I mean.  I'm talking down not up.

I was recently reading the story of the friends who lowered the paralysed man through the roof to see Jesus.  In the story, they tried to get him in to see Jesus in hopes that Jesus would heal their friend.  But they couldn't get through the crowd.  So they went up on the roof, and it says they actually dug a hole in the roof to lower the man down.  When Jesus saw their faith, he said the man's sins were forgiven.  This of course sparked controversy with the religious leaders who questioned Jesus, so he healed the man to demonstrate his authority to also forgive sins.

What struck me in this story is the friends.  First they took a friend there.  Imagine the scenario.  In this time, handicapped people were considered to have sinned or to be bearing the punishment for the sins of their parents.  It didn't just happen to people in their minds.  So to be friends with this person was a thing in itself, but not outside of reasonable understanding.  We see this today in similar forms.

Healers in that day were also fairly common.  Historic records talk of this thing periodically, so it wouldn't have been all that strange for a healer to pass through town and draw a crowd.  In days before modern medicine, this was a significant hope for people.

But what really gets me is the ingenuity of these friends.  This is where I resonate with them so strongly.  They could have just waited their turn and hoped patiently to see Jesus, but they weren't content with that.  The need of their friend took precedence over everyone else's needs in their mind.  Wow.  No one teaches that!  I'm not saying they would deny everyone else their chance, but they weren't going to be content to passively sit back.  They had a hope of helping their friend and they were going to make it happen to the greatest of their ability.  Their attitude was not to sit back and patiently wait on God.  They were pushing in and when they couldn't get in, they came up with something else.

I wonder which one had the idea.  They're looking at each other.  The paralysed friends is probably speechless or consoling them that it's ok...they tried.  But one of them looks over up at the roof.  Maybe there were stairs to a flat deck, maybe it was just a thatched roof that they had to climb up on.  But one of them says, "what about up there?"  Were they all in agreement, or did they have to argue it.  Was one the driving force that had the great idea or was it a group of mischievous friends?  Were they scrappy working men who built houses and knew what to do or did they figure it out as they went?  However it happened, they ended up on the roof.

There they found the spot where Jesus was and then began to tear out someone's roof!  Was this an easy repair or something that would take work?  Did they have a plan to fix it later or did they just act and leave the consequences for later?  Mark says they actually dug through the roof, which makes it seem like it wasn't simply removing a few palm fronds.  It could have been abode or dob.  This would be making a serious hole!  Even if it was thatched, you don't just pull off some leaves.  To make thatch water-tight it has to be thick and well hung.  It's also no easy thing to repair, since you have to layer the thatch from bottom to top up the roof slope.  So either way, these guys did some property damage.

Imagine the owner's reaction when he sees his roof torn out and this hole opening up in it!  How would you react?  These guys could have been arrested or charged with criminal activity.  Surely they knew this to some degree.  But it didn't stop them.

And their action was rewarded.  Jesus was impressed with their faith.  I have never been encouraged to act the same way.  No one has ever taught me to help a friend at all costs.  The closest I've ever encountered is teaching about sacrificial giving, but that is even watered down into simply giving more than we would like to a ministry.

But these friends demonstrate real human faith.  We don't even know how they felt about Jesus.  But if there was a chance their friend could be healed, they did everything they could think of to make that happen regardless of what happened to them.

This is the faith I want to live.  This is the faith I am living.  God has called me to it and I have committed.  These hands, this mind, these dreams, ingenuity, creativity, blood, breath, words, money, materials; everything in my power is given to this.  I will tear out roofs, make roads, and go to my death in this cause, God help me.  Try me and see.

Run

Today I ran.  I run nearly every Friday.  Just me.  In the woods.  No shirt, low tech minimal shoes.  I don't run alone though.  God runs with me.  I can feel the Spirit Lord rush behind me, through me, over me.  Meet me at a bend, whisper to me, shout to me.  I follow his voice.  I run until he stops me.  Sometimes I run fast and hard. Sometimes I run slow.  Sometimes I pause.  Sometimes I am dropped on my butt in awe.

I don't just run.  I also climb, jump, balance, swing.  I am the animal I was made.  I am in tune with my ancestors.  I can feel their joy in me.  I interact with the real world.  Today I ran with deer.  Bounding around me along the trail.  I have argued with hogs.  I have followed raccoons.  I have petted armadillos.  I am becoming less a threat to them and more a part of their world.

I learn too.  Today, I vaulted the table again.  Twice.  I had been hampered by my own mind since falling hard several months ago.  I knew I could do it, but couldn't manage it.  Today I did it.  It was awkward, but successful.

I also ran up a new tree.  Four steps, nearly vertical, no hands.  I have tried many times.  This was the first.  I ran and ran.  I got two steps.  The next time I ran harder and got three steps.  But still not high enough.  Today, I got nearly there.  Then I decided to stop climbing and run the whole way.  The realization settled on me and I felt the flow engage as I focused hard on the first foot plant.  Then lifted my eyes to the end goal and I was soaring into it.  Beyond it actually.  It will only get easier from here.

It was the same with the side jumps.  Jump horizontally from one vertical surface to another.  I could manage one side and then slowly learned to land the other.  Now I can jump from one tree to another and continue forward motion.

This is the physical manifestation of my spiritual discipline.  In this practice, I am healed and made whole, even as my body aches.  Even the rips and tears in my skin, the bruises, the sore muscles are healing.  They are part of the warrior.  I am a man and need to feel physical pain to be wholly who I am made to be.  It confirms I exist and that I can survive.

I am this thing called man.  Half spiritual, half physical, ruler of the natural world, heir to the heavens.  When I run, all is merged into one whole and it is good.

Reckless and Painful

The things we feel strongest about are the things we struggle with ourselves.  I recently realized how a few strands of the complex nature-nurture paradigm sort out for myself.  Funny I never saw it before, because it seems so obvious.  Certainly some of my lack of conformity and counter-culture proclivity is natural.  But more than I thought of it is learned.  Not learned, in the positive sense, but in the defensive sense.  Conditioned, I guess is a better word.  This web is complex and I can't sort it all out here.

If you read this blog much, it will be apparent to you that I often struggle with doubt and self-criticism.  I have a pessimistic outlook and must actively look for the good.  I always thought there was something wrong with me, an imbalance of some kind, or just a strangely Puddleglum-like demeanour.  But I'm starting to suspect this may not be the case.  Ultimately, I am what I am now and can't sort out what all is natural vs effects of events and conditions.

But what I can take away from this is that I can like myself.  You see, I have always truly understood that I didn't measure up.  I never cut it.  So I looked for ways to get around it or avoid having to be faced with it.  Ironically, instead of giving up, I learned how to hide it well.  To put on the expected face and even to function at quite a high level.  I've recently learned this is common of people who are raised in an overly critical environment.  Again, I'm not saying it is all someone else's fault, but I previously never considered that it might not be all my fault.  So this is gained ground for me.

Even though I knew God loved me, I could truly never understand why.  This is overwhelming and inhibiting in some ways.  I am now learning to let go of some of that intense self-criticism and see the way God sees me. See myself the way I see others.

This also explains some of my deep hatred for those who prey on those weaker and helpless.  My deep desire to build up and care for the lost and rejected.  I subconsciously can't abide to see another facing what I feel.  To see it ignored. 

It isn't subconscious any more.  Now instead of needing to do it, I can choose to do it.  And I do choose it.  I don't have to.  I could shelter and hedge and prevent further hurt.  But I'm not going to do that.  I'm going to continue to love recklessly and choose to take the hurt that may come with it.  This is what Jesus did.  And this is what he's calling me to do.  So what may have been bad will be turned to good.  My pain will be others' solace.

This in no way excuses those who may have done something wrong to me.  "Woe to the one through whom it comes".  But I will learn to forgive and will pay my pain forward in love.  This is the power of Christ's redemption.  I am freed from fear of pain, freed from the need for self-preservation.  This truly makes me righteous and dangerous, and I can love recklessly and painfully.

I am scarred and broken.  I am wounded and hurt.  I will always be weird and misunderstood.  I will still have bad spells.  But I understand a bit more of who I really am now.  A bit more of the name on the stone has been revealed.  There is power in this.

Woof

My new life is amazing.  I mean that literally.  I am so often amazed now.  But I have also never been more aware of my gross inadequacy to comprehend.  The metaphor of sheepdog has never felt more apt.

In this new life I am more keenly aware of joys and pains, but I am powerless to understand them.  In the joys I wag uncontrollably so that every fiber trembles with it.  In the pains, I want to help but am not capable.  These paws just won't grasp and I can't understand all the words.  And so I slink down and lay at your feet, unable to do more, but waiting for any sign that I can understand.  At one of those words I will jump to action.  I start at every sound, rife with anticipation.  If a bite would help I would bite.  If my head on your knee would help, I would place it.

I am sitting.  Waiting for the command. For the opening.  I will spring to whatever action is required.  In the meantime, I can't even determine if you can understand me.  Do you know what I am saying to you?  Do you know that my greatest joy is to be a part of yours?

The hardest thing for me is the waiting.  I am doing my best.  I must sit.  Stay.  Hold.  The Master knows what he's doing.  I am just the sheepdog.

Rough

This has been a pretty rough weekend.  It happens.  Not that anything particularly bad has happened.  In fact, some very good things have actually occurred and it may get better still before it's over.  Truthfully, I wouldn't be surprised if the bad has been simply because the good was on its way and certain goods illicit spiritual resistance.  Perhaps in the amazing God way, the resistance furthers the good in spite of its intent to do the opposite.

Still it has been rough of a kind I haven't had in a long time.  It started building a while back with tensions in a part of my family.  That didn't go well at all and the best that could come of it was an open acknowledgement of the problem on my part and a refusal to sit under it any more.  This nonetheless hurt to do and revealed to me something about the relationship which I have long known to be the case.  I don't blame anyone here...really.  I don't think anyone meant for these things to happen, but there has been a long history of unspoken disappointments on both sides.  The long and short is that it awakened deep fears and pains in me.  Deeper than I knew.

Add to that a recent occurrence with another part of my family which piled on to already great tensions and hurt.  I was not involved directly and the conflict is between others, but I see the wounds and the aftermath.

Then add in some difficulties arranging certain upcoming events, sickness in some of the family, minor injuries in others, and top it all off with a supposedly all natural, safe, vitamin energy drink which might as well have been crack in a system like mine that can't tolerate anything beyond primitive whole foods, and you have the perfect makings of a bad head.  It doesn't take much for my demons to see an opportunity like this and they are all about exploiting it to full advantage.  This leaves me a tremoring wreck of doubts, fears, anger, confusion, and sadness. 

Of course most of the time, I can put on a brave face and go about my day, and for years I've managed pretty well.  But this weekend I kept losing it at random moments.  Fortunately I was alone each time.  But perhaps this is not fortunate because then no one sees the state I'm in, which only serves as fuel on the fire when they cast a weird glance and simply go about their business oblivious to the tortured captive crying out from behind my eyes.  This is of course fully exploited by my tormentors who keep whispering accusations and lies to me.

In my stronger moments, when chemicals aren't altering my awareness and mood, I can brush past these gaseous scavengers and don't give it a second thought.  But times like these, I am reminded of my sins and flaws and weakness.

Even still, I am more aware of God with me and in others than I have been in the past.  My tribe is still expanding, my influence and reach is growing.  In fact I happily confirmed one more in my family this weekend.  Even in my throes, God is able to work through me, confirming yet again that what good is in me is not of myself. 

And about midway through writing this, I was able to experience the peace and quiet joy of confession.  I have long heard from my Catholic friends about this, but have never really had the opportunity to experience it.  Of course, I didn't talk to a priest in that sense, but appealed to the natural priesthood of a trusted sister who was able to listen, and demonstrate absolution in her acceptance of what I am writing here, only to a level of detail which I will not write here.

Thank God for all he is.

Kick

I know many well-meaning people who spend their lives as a series of all-consuming pushes.  Sometimes they roll from one to the other with little or no downtime.  Sometimes they ride one for a long time and then crash into a slump until the next one comes along.  Both of these are basically the same thing.

I don't think they mean to appear faddy.  I think they legitimately think this next thing might be the one. Or else they're chasing fireflies distracted by each new flash of light and never realizing their lack of constancy.

But that's just the thing.  Constancy.  To be sure even this can be bad if it becomes so entrenched that one lives in a rut and never changes anything, but some constancy is a good thing.  We need to be stable.  Stability lets others depend on us.  They know what we're about.  They know where we'll be.

So I encourage any reader to look at yourself.  Count up how many things you've promoted, bandwagoned, cycled through.  Are you casting about for some meaning you can't find?  Are you looking for that real thing only to keep finding falsity?  If you keep getting into things and finding them go sour, I can promise you, that isn't how things should go.  It isn't normal corruption taking over.  If this is your life, you're living in the temporal.

Certainly things change.  Good to come, good to go.  But if a year ago you were part of some group, then you started your own, then you joined another all in that time frame, I'd say you should slow down and see what you might be missing.  If you live on inspiring pushes of art or friendship or whatever only to find yourself sinking into doldrums when those things get stale or end, you might be missing something as well.  If you constantly reinvent yourself after a cycle of a few years, trying one style or self-definition after another, you really need to take a look.  If you abandon your friends for cycles of several years only to cycle back in like an orbiting comet, look at yourself.  No judgement.  Just an exhortation.  You decide for yourself.

I simply want to put to you that there is another way.  Figure out what it is that your missing.  What is common to all the beginnings or ends?  A real stable constancy is available.  A life of fulfilling relations, interests, new things, effective service is possible...just perhaps not in the way you think.  You already have everything you need allocated and waiting in the scheme of space and time.  You just have to reach out and take it.  Life is easy...it's our own selves that make it otherwise.  I'm learned this.  If what you're doing isn't working, stop doing it the same way every time.  Otherwise, I can tell you the next kick, the next ministry, the next identity, the next inspiration will end very much like all the others.

Counterproductive

I don't participate in politics (in the common sense).  I have many reasons for this.  First is that my conscience won't allow me to vote for a person I can't trust.  Also, my ethics won't allow me to participate in a system I know to be corrupt.  So as a free man, I exercise my valid political choice to abstain.  Then, perhaps most importantly, my faith tells me my hope is not in this world.  God controls all things and it is not incumbent upon me to punch a ballot to effect His will.  I can and will accomplish all He has for me regardless of the person in some human contrived office.  Not to mention most discussion of such people in the Bible was negative as they are usually corrupt by reason of the fact that they occupy the position in the first place.  But this is a personal choice and I do not expect anyone else to have to follow what I am led to do.  If God is telling you to participate in whatever fashion, go do it by all means.  He isn't telling me that.

Which brings me to my point.  As a third party observer, I have noticed something that needs mentioning.  I'm speaking to those who call themselves Christians.  If your 8 year old kids are running into public spaces chanting a candidate's name, you are too bound up in this and I would encourage you to think about these things:

First of all, as I said above, you are welcome to your political opinions.  That is the right of every free person.  But I want to caution you about so overtly declaring one candidate.  To be sure, publicly declaring your opinions on a policy or issue is acceptable, even to be encouraged.  But when it comes to supporting a person, can you really guarantee that the candidate you are espousing will so perfectly follow your beliefs that you are willing to be judged by the community on it?  Are you willing to have your faith, which you are also vocal about, tainted by the association with a candidate who does one thing you support, but others which are overtly against your beliefs?  And believe me, right or wrong, you are being judged.  If you don't realize this, you are far too insulated from the world.

Which brings me to my second caution.  If you believe that you should share your faith and that those who support another candidate are morally in error, is it beneficial to constantly throw in their face your political views?  How will this win anyone to your view?  How will this even incline them to hear you on any topic.  You are drawing a line in the sand and condemning those on the other side as wrong or worse. 

What would you do?  Oppress the opposing view?  Crush the resistance?  Establish a moral and religious state that lines with your views?  See caution one!  And then see the Islamic world!  Can you not see the injustice this would cause?  And once you established it, God forbid, you're party lose power, because then, you, my friend, are screwed!  Prepare to be a refugee, rebel, or slave.

Of course I know most people who are active in their local church, inviting their neighbors to come, and yet wearing political t-shirts to pass out candy on Halloween haven't even thought this through.  Which is why I wanted to share this.  By all means have your opinions and do what God leads you to do.  Support who you feel right to support and speak out on the issues that need to hear your perspective.  But remember the universal truth that your opinion is, in fact, not as important as you would like it to be.  But the consequences of your overly vocal support of a fallible human being who has made a career out of convincing people to give him power are very real.  If your faith is real to you, can you really justify this?  Wouldn't it be better and more prudent to have a sober and quiet opinion with respect to the beliefs of others who are, I promise you, watching to see if the faith you claim to be so revolutionary is real, and how it shows up in your life.

Unspeakable

Sometimes I have nothing to say.  I go through cycles.  But for once I have tons of things to say and can't find words for them.

Suffice to say, the life God has for me is opening up and it is overwhelmingly more than what I would dream of.  I mean this in very literal ways.  This is why it is hard to put into words in a general context.  There is nothing general about it and I can't possibly explain the intimate and complex details that surround it.

Perhaps the Via Negativa would help.  So I will say what it is not.  It is not in my head.  It is not philosophical, affecting no real change in the material world.  It is not tied to the institutions we call church...

...Here is what I would say and the ones about whom it is written can understand it for themselves.  You are beautiful. You are so loved.  God has seen you.  He has not even once forgotten you.  I don't know the reasons for the circumstances in your life.  I am just a Sheep Dog who barely understands the Shepherd's language.  But I see what he has done for you.  I see how the universe has been ordered for your specific good.  I see you as he sees you.  You are stunning and powerful beyond compare.  My love for you is not rooted in pity nor charity, nor brotherly affection.  It is as beyond me as every good thing I have ever done.  To be near you, to guard, aid, serve, you is an honor and a pleasure.  I am elated that you would call me friend.  You have only to make a need known and I will be about meeting it with whatever is within my power.  I don't even know what that is.  But I have been charged with doing it and the resources and methods will be provided.  This is not an idle promise, as I hope you now see.  All that has been given to me is from God and for his purposes.  I hold it lightly and in common with you.

And I truly enjoy your company, your humor, your presence.  I want to be around you because I like you.  It is good for me too.  I am better for having known you.  In one sense, because doing what we are made for is fulfilling, but more so because you inspire me, comfort me, encourage me even if you don't know it.

In short, I love you.  And while nothing I can say will prove it or guarantee any moment into the future, it is true as true and every moment that I am there demonstrates it to be so.

This is the life we were called to live.  This tribal, close, familial life.  Thank you for having me into yours.  Together things will only get better.  I know it because God has shown me the ending.  Let's walk toward it together.

Down and Down

This rabbit hole seems unending.  It's very difficult to right oneself when everything is moving.  As soon as I seem to become oriented, I realize that I haven't actually hit the bottom yet.  Perhaps it only feels that I've righted because everything around me is falling at the same rate for a bit.  But pretty soon it all lists oddly in the air and disorientation ensues.

I have long believed that we could only find what we need in God.  I have even come to know it through many circumstances that have forced me to rely only on Him alone.  He's even shown me that He will not only keep his word to provide, but does so quite literally "exceedingly, abundantly more" than I could, would, or even ask.  I have even begun to live in this confidence in a real way.

But no sooner do I realize I have progressed than a chair tilts and the rug flutters and the whole room disengages in the freefall.  I guess I should just stop arranging the furniture.

But that's just it: I don't intend to arrange anything.  I just find a chair nearby and decide to pull it under me because falling is tiring.  And then a glass of water floats by and I'm kind of thirsty.  But then a table floats up and I conveniently place the glass on it, snatch the lamp from the air for some better lighting, and before you know it, there's another falling room.

Even though I've been learning all these things I recently realized there was yet another level to it all and I was finding validation in something other than God.  It was innocent enough but sinuous and sneaky nonetheless.  You see, in doing the things God has for me to do, I become first agitated and then irritated and approaching angry when people don't allow it.  Not because I want what I want, but because I see how this or that person could so benefit but won't.  It's like delivering a really great present to someone from a rich relative.  I know what's in the box and know how perfect it is for them.  I've even got a similar one from this same relative.  But they won't open it.  I tell them how great it is and they still just sit it in the corner.  So I tell them what's in it and they smile and ohh about it, but say they'll get to it.  And this can go on far more than you would imagine.  It would be easier if they openly rejected it, but to keep piling up unopened presents is pert near insane to me.

So I go back to God confused and uncertain.  Did I screw up?  Did I miss something?  And that's when I realized recently that I am finding validation in helping others, even anonymously.  I am hinging my joy on other's actions...on their acceptance of these gifts...on their good.  Rather, I should be secure and stable enough in God's dealings with me that others' actions, even actions toward God, do not create anxiety in me.  And there goes the room again.

I have to come to fully trust God to meet their needs as he meets mine.  My eagerness for their good, my sadness at their pain is not to go away, but to be absorbed in God's full provision for us all.  And this is something I truly do not know how to do.  I can't even imagine how I could be content having the power to ease loved ones' burdens and not being allowed to do so.  Which means I will as usual, have to totally rely on God to do it.

Answer

Today I've been surrounded by awareness of God's presence.  I don't know why.  I'm aware of what He's saying and feeling toward me more than usual.  This morning He impressed upon me that someone was praying for something and that I was the answer.

No, not that I, particularly, was an answer to someone's prayers in the cocky sense.  But quite the opposite.  It is tremendously humbling to think that someone has cried out to God to provide something they need desperately and that in answer, He sends me.

I don't know if this refers to something that has already happened, something that will happen, or just a parable-like lesson.  Maybe it's a combination of them all.  But I am honored and humbled.  I know my own flaws.  I know my own inadequacies.  I also know that I asked God to use me, to send me where He will.  I figured I'd be part of something or more likely a voice in the wilderness declaring God's message.  But to think that I, messed up and willfully rebellious, am the medium of God's answer to someone's cry from their heart.  It's so personal and tender I can barely allow myself to process it.  I'm trembling and crying as I type this.  I don't deserve to do it.  How can I represent God in the flesh?  How can these hands and this tongue convey a fraction of His love.  It's so far beyond me.

I know I am nothing more than the vessel.  What good comes from me is not me, but the Spirit Lord in me.  So logically, I know I can do this.  But I don't even feel capable of conducting this kind of power.

I will go, though.  I will do it.  Maybe I am, or already have.  Good God!  Thank you for using me.

Aha!

A while ago I mentioned briefly this feeling I've had at times in churches when I try to let go.  There's two reactions: uncontrollable crying and desire to tear the place up.  This happens when I try to open up to God in the service.  Not every time, but a lot of the time.  See usually, I sit quietly, but feel a bit like I have to strap myself in the seat...restrain myself you could say.  So I have various techniques for doing it.  Over the years they've become habitual and I don't really think about them that much.  This lets me get through the service without making some kind of scene. But when I decide to see if God is doing something; open myself up to whatever He has in that moment.  These are often the reactions I get.  I have never known why.

In the last post that mentioned it, I ended up going off in another direction and never explored it.  But then today, I tried again as I watched all these people doing similar behaviors, one arm raised, head to the side, swaying to the music, hands clutched to chest, etc.  I was thinking, is this just mimicry picked up from watching others and assuming that's what it looks like to have a spiritual experience of worship, or is it something universally real that I am missing?  So I opened myself and asked God to tell me what He was doing.  I felt the old desire to tear the place up!  So I quickly shut it down...but not before the thought hit me in connection with a recent Facebook post I made which quoted a modern adaptation of Isaiah 1:11-17.  I had posted it after reading it because it affected me so dramatically at the moment.  This connection was fleeting, but lingered long enough to make me question...am I really connecting with God's heart here?

Is my desire to tear up the place coming from His sorrow and frustration at the facade of religion that obscures who He is?  This is not unfounded.  Jesus tore up the temple courts in Jerusalem for the same reason.  There are many verses in the Bible where God expresses his displeasure at this very thing and the destruction it would cause.  Could the tears also be the other side of that coin?  Anger is just an expression of hurt, as is sorrow.  We feel both at the same time on many occasions.  Since our image is God's it follows that He feels it the same way.

So I delved a little deeper into that feeling and discovered that there isn't any malice in it.  I don't want to hurt people; I don't even have any ill will.  I just want to tear out the facade.  So I thought, what would I say if I did it?  This is what I discovered:

I would charge the stage, take the mic and as I set about tearing apart the decorations and apparati, I'd ask everyone if God was real to them.  Is He really real to them?  Is this all they expect?  Wake up and for once follow their hearts fully!  Let's see God really show up then and there!  I'd jump across the rows of chairs toward any person who responded, climb the light fixtures and rafters and bring the place into chaos.

No doubt most people would be terrified and I'd probably be tackled and drug out screaming...but if God did show up, there would be a moment like Pentacost...the real deal, not the equally fakey occurrences that happen weekly amongst groups of the pentacostal bent.

Has this ever happened to you?  Have you ever longed for something so real and hated the falsity of anything less?  Have you felt things inside you that you aren't sure where they come from?  If so, don't settle. You're not alone and perhaps even less alone than you think.

Deep Cuts

I feel like something is happening deep inside me.  My perceptions are changing, my reactions too.  Emotions surface at strange times and in strange ways.  It's almost like someone is rooting around deep inside and trying to sort things out.  Which may very well be what is happening.  Sometimes what comes up is not pleasant.  Mostly it isn't I guess.  Things I never even new about myself will just pop up from deep down and I am taken aback.

Also pains will surface in ways and about things I didn't even know hurt me.  I'm finding that I often react in anger to what is truly a fear.  I've seen this before in people and I don't think it's that odd.  But I never knew I was doing it.

It isn't all bad.  Sometimes great joys surface and I find a very unshakable peace and confidence in many things.  But just as quickly a new circumstance or stray comment or sometimes just out of nowhere, I'll be hit with something else.

Last night I was restless again...which has occurred for the past few nights.  It's partly some things I understand: physical, circumstantial, manageable.  But then last night it just wouldn't quit.  I kept calling out to God in my dreams.  I could see Jesus standing a distance away but couldn't keep my focus on him.  Then I'd slip into another fitful dream.  Then this morning as dawn came I woke enough to prayed verbally about some things that were on my mind.  Then I started crying and couldn't stop for about an hour.  Then it was over.  I'm not even sure what it was that upset me other than it felt like I had my heart uprooted all night.

I can only imagine how much more intense this must have been for Jesus when he was living on this earth.  He has been described by third party historians as somber and quiet.  No doubt looking at the world from God's perspective has great joys, but also many pains as he saw the hardness of hearts and confusion of minds.  The general lostness of the all those around him.  I'm having enough trouble being confronted with my own and the occasional glance into those he places close to me.

Expansion

I am so blessed.  This is a phrase that is hard to say with any real meaning since it is so cleche.  But I refuse to let it be stolen from all usage.  I am blessed.  My household is expanding.  Even as I shed the last vestiges of the American Dream.  Prayers are being answered.  God is meeting my needs in very real and close personal ways.  This is also cleche, but I'm beginning to understand it.

My family has expanded and improved...been touched by glory, even.  My wife is more beautiful to me than ever before.  More desirable and more satisfying.  I mean that.  She is a total package of internal and external beauty.  I find myself staring at her and even notice that the intentionally titillating stuff on TV and movies has no real appeal to me compared to her.  I'm not making this up.  I'm human and do not lie that I have been attracted by this kind of thing.  But recently, I find it holds nothing for me compared to her.

My son is growing and learning to adapt to his new life.  I've always had a hard time connecting with him, but I think we are making progress there.  He might finally be learning to see the real goals of my training and discipline.  And I am ready to be more honest with him about it.  I never thought much good could come from hiding things, even small things like why we tell him to do certain things, or how we budget our money, etc.  And I think he is responding.

I have a beautiful goddaughter whom I love dearly.  She is not merely the kid that I stood next to in some ceremony.  She was imprinted on my heart by God himself.  She is truly beautiful, as she begins to grow up and I can see that she will be a stunning picture of physical beauty, but her heart is tender and sweet.  she thinks often of others first and will be a model for what God intends for a woman to be.  She is beginning to trust this relationship and see her own real value beyond the cheesy self-esteem stuff.  She is lovely and lovable and she is learning how to live in that.

Her mom is starting to accept us as family as well.  We are learning to communicate and help each other in real ways and my hope is that this will continue to grow into an increasingly permanent bond of family.

And lastly, we just recently became godparents to her other daughter!  A brilliantly smart and beautiful teenager who quickly understands situations in a very insightful way.  She is equally modest about her successes and strengths.  Which is so appealing in this age of boasting and self-aggrandizing.  She is physically and emotionally beautiful and so smart, making for a very appealing woman.  My hope is that she will come to understand her value as her sister is learning to.

She was recently added to our family because God started to point her out to us.  We have loved her for a long time now, but finally the time was right to ask her if we could be her family and she was so happy.  As am I.  I have long believed that family is found more in the intentional relation of people than in any other form.  The saying is only part true.  Blood may be thicker than water, but spirit is the strongest bond of all.  I have also long felt a hole in myself that bit by bit, I learned was cut for this very thing.

I don't know how long things last.  I'm sure trials and troubles will come again.  But I also feel confident that I am not in the same place I was before.  God has raised me up.  He has expanded my territory.  Not just my family, but my work, my friends, my finances, my health, everything is now bearing a light of power and glory.  I know that whatever comes, I shall not be forsaken and my God is my strength and my hope.  I hope my reach as Legatus Regni continues to expand to reveal God's glory in this world.  And regardless of that, I will stand by those God has given me as long as I live.

To them I say that they have nothing to fear.  God has answered their prayers.  They may not see it or know it yet.  But I am just the advance runner bringing news of what is to come.  Just wait and see.  And I will be there with you and for you all through everything to come.  This is not my promise.  This is God's promise to you.  I am made for this, so it is pure joy and fulfilment for me to be this gift to you.  In short, I love you.

Capitalized

Our minds are not as secure as we like to think.  No...I will phrase that personally since I don't know anything about anyone else's mind.  My mind is not as secure as I like to think.  It doesn't help to live with someone who has an uncanny and reproducible ESP.  But that isn't what I mean either.

I mean the ability for Satan (yes I wrote it finally) to use my mind against me.  I'm sure there is a deep sanctuary somewhere that no but me and God have access to...perhaps a place even I don't have access to.  But then there are the surface activities of my mind which are only slightly less public than spoken words.  These are the thoughts that are available to ESPers and other beings with the appropriate senses to perceive them.

But this is a given for me.  What brought me to this blog entry is the recent occurrence of very good objects of my thoughts being capitalized upon to make me miserable.  Of course I could just be doing this to myself, but there is no way to tell the difference so it really doesn't matter.  The fact is things which I care about are easy prey for my fears.  It doesn't take much to turn a beautiful thing into a misery of anxiety.  I have been facing this all week.

I am hoping to stop it now.  Just by recognizing it for what it is and refusing to be victim to it, I can gain ground.  I also have to focus on what is true and what is outside of my mind.  Inside is a terrible mine field of shifting unrealities.  I must focus on that which is not me.  That which exists whether I will it, know it, or understand it.

This is a great value in the structure of Christianity.  So many other religions focus inward.  But I know God as other, as beyond.  His most vivid revelation of himself was not in me, but in the physical world.  If it was in me, how could I be sure it was real?  No, I will recount facts and will trust in Him who is not me, who is other than me, yet permeates me as well.  I need to hear the voice of the real to see things as they are and to trust Him for what I can't see.  The alternative is to forever have my joys and victories usurped and capitalized upon for my undoing.

No more.

Rabbit

Last night I dreamed of a rabbit.  It was nothing special.  A typical brown Florida rabbit hopping unexpectedly into the scene of the dream from a place that rabbits might live.  It was not even part of the storyline of the dream.  It just occurred as a moment in the dream.  It didn't do anything magical or strange.  Just looked at me and then hopped on about it's business.  This is common for me with dream symbols and I've learned to pay attention to them when they occur.

Truthfully, I didn't even think much about it until my wife mentioned a rabbit today and the recollection of the dream flooded back.  But then she said she also dreamed of a rabbit last night, though in a different form.  That really made me start thinking.

Now, I'm wont to over think everything, so this in itself may be the meaning of the symbol, but since understanding a dream is more about understanding how the dreamer reacted to the symbol and what it means to that person, I thought to write it out and see what occurs.

I looked up typical meanings of rabbits in dreams, in myths, in folklore.  There's a lot there about magic and innocence, and helplessness, and fertility, and cunning, but it really has more to do with the associations I give rabbits, so I wasn't settled on any one thing.

So how do I view rabbits?  I think most of Br'er Rabbit.  They are smart, cunning, elusive, mischievous.  While they can be seen as innocent and helpless, I don't view them that way.  In fact, I'm more apt to see them as kind of mean.  This comes from experiences with real rabbits.  Their cute looks bely teeth and claws.  They fight with each other, bite, and even abandon their young.  But this is part of their nature and secondary in my mind.  We are all of us made up of pleasant and not so pleasant aspects that form a synergistic whole. 

So for me, rabbits are uncatchable without weapons.  Not needing to eat them, I see them as fellow creatures sharing a space.  They are relatively untameable, adaptable.  We find them existing in close proximity to us and often not even known.  Unlike other commensal species, they keep their distance and do relatively little nuisance to us.

I once had an experience with a rabbit as part of a school project to experience 'place'.  I had to visit the same place for a set duration for a set period of time and record anything of note both internal and external.  Then cap it off with a presentation expressing what I had learned of the place.

My place was a little grove where a rabbit just like the one in the dream kept appearing as well.  It would come out and lounge and I began to try to take a picture of it up close.  But this required some stalking with my old disposable camera.  This sparked a silent game in which I would wait for it, then stalk, only to be foiled at the moment of the shutter click when it would bounce away.  By the end of the project I had given up and decided to say my goodbyes and admit defeat.  That very last day, the rabbit appeared again and this time brought out several little ones in tow.  This mother allowed me to see them this once, showed me to them, and quickly herded them back into their lair.  It was truly a moment of understanding for us both.  She had been playing with me all along, protecting her young which were no doubt watching from the brush.

I was reminded of Br'er Rabbit.  The stories I had grown up on told of this tricky cunning nature.  So I capped my project by sketching my rabbit friend as Br'er Rabbit.  And to this day, I always greet rabbits kindly and respectfully when I see them.  This is my primary association with the animal.

But another aspect of understanding a dream is how the image in the dream was perceived in the dream.  What emotions and thoughts did it arouse?  This is difficult and I won't blog all the details since they are complex and very personal.  There is a bit of a revelatory or capstone nature to it.  Sort of cementing or confirming the effects of some good changes that have happened in my life.  And there is a bit of the fear representation element, though it is a subtle care more than a real fear, like the fear of breaking something delicate.  Then there is the aspect of fertility, though not my own or my wife's that is at issue. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly is the aspect of intuition.  The rabbit looked at me and a moment of understanding passed.  Since rabbits can represent intuition, I am confirmed in thinking that it might have been a message to let go of my rationality in certain situations of my life and go with my intuition.  My logic doubts it, but perhaps this dream was telling me to trust it.

The symbol is so complex, but it all rolls into one cloudy sort of point at one particular complex thing in my waking life.  I am becoming more settled on this as I write.  If I dream it again that could confirm or change it.  But either way, time will tell.

Affirmative

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the nature of love and my reactions to certain things in my life.  Overall, things are not bad, and I feel I am now able to take a few steps toward living the life I am made to live.  But this life is increasingly uncertain in that there is not a clear path or plan.  It is an increasingly day by day, moment by moment existence where I am constantly evaluating my circumstances, looking and listening for God's direction.

I am totally happy to be in this place, but at the same time it offers unexpected challenges.  Namely, I find myself subject to many doubts.  Since I have no clear path immediately before me, I am open to self-criticism.  I have been learning how to deal with this, but one thing I feel a need to do is to affirm what I know to be true about myself.  A friend and mentor once told me that we must forever recount the goodness of God in our lives.  Keep the truth forever before our eyes lest we forget and despair in the moment.  So in that vein, I am writing this.  I hope that it will not seem pretentious or proud.  But considering that only one or two people will ever read this, I don't think that will be a big problem.  Here's what I know:

I am Cav.  I am a child of God.  A sinner saved by unmerited favor.  I did not choose Him, He chose me, chased me, rescued me from my own destruction.  As such I am bound to Him by love and duty.  I am His come flames of hell or glories of pleasure.  I can not be otherwise.

I was born under the vow of Hanna, like Samuel, given over to God before my very conception.  I had nothing to do with it.

I died.  I was given life and forfeit it, despising the gift, unworthy of it.  I gave it up and it was snatched up by my God.  I do not own it.  I am Aragh the wolf, living dead that I might not fear for my life and can exist with abandon.

I am a wild child made for and shaped by the natural world.  I understand it, feel at home in it.  It is a part of my being.  Untamable, infinitely adaptable, unity in diversity, diversity in unity, dangerous and gentle, life-giving and life-taking.

I am a Sheepdog, helping my Shepherd handle the sheep.  Loyal, commandable, responsive, intuitive, brave, self-sacrificing, unassuming, unseeking of glory.  I desire only to hear my master's praise and feel his hand upon my head.  I will not lose one with whom I am charged.  I will give my life for them and in the service of the Shepherd without a second thought.  They are as safe with me as they are with Him, though anyone who would harm them will feel my savage bite.

I am a seer, able to understand and interpret things as they are in Truth, as the Spirit gives me clarity.  This is not a magic power.  This is not a self-aggrandizing thing.  In fact, it is quite the opposite, it comes with a burden.  I will forever be outcast, misunderstood, misaligned with those around me.  Camel hair and locusts are my lot.  This is a fallen world, so seeing more means I cannot ignore pain, I feel the ache of God's heart for his lost children, their pain and sin hurts me and I long to gather them up under His sheltering wings.  Sadly, this is too often rejected as we strive to be well on our own.  Too unfamiliar to people.  This is my burden.  Yet, I will love openly, live openly, speak openly, poor myself out and take in the pain and rejection as Jesus himself was rejected.  I know that though I may suffer, others will see God's love because it does not return void.

I am all of this and more.  Imperfect, broken, punk to the world because I am of a different stuff, for a different world.  And I will accomplish all that He has for me, not in my own strength but because He is my portion and He will not be forsworn.  So help me God.

God did it

I've been saving this up until the entire deal was over and I could safely say so.  Now I believe it is true.  Here's the story.

We bought our house at the tail end of the housing peak.  We were smart enough to avoid the pitfall mortgages and to buy a house that we could afford.  We bought it under value, did lots of work to it, and in a year had it reappraised.  We had gained significant equity which we thought would preserve us during the inevitable crash that everyone with a brain saw coming.  But it didn't.  The values fell so far that we not only lost the equity but the house was valued at less than half what we paid for it.

Now things were still good in that we could afford it.  But the neighborhood, which was not the best in the first place began to slip and we could not sell or refinance.  We were locked into the payment for thirty years.  At the rate of recovery there was no way we could ever make back the money and certainly not within a time frame which we needed to move.

So we debated several things and investigated options and ultimately sat on it until the time seemed right.  Earlier this year, that time hit.  We decided we needed to get out.  Trouble at my son's school, new neighbor issues, the huge albatross of a home investment, family issues all pointed to one thing.  But we knew we had no options before.  but we also know that God is all powerful and works in the world today.  So I asked him to take care of this some way or other.

I called the bank to ask about options, knowing there weren't many for people who were smart enough to afford their homes...why would a bank help someone who could pay?  But they said there were programs for our case.  So I needed a realtor.  My wife knew one who turned out to specialize in short sales, so we signed up with her.  She gave us details about programs and processes and we were in for the haul, expecting this could take nearly a year and cost us money in the end.

But then the bank told us they had a program that was essentially a "no doc" short sale.  We say we need to sell and they work with us to do it.  No financial record search, no haggling, etc.  Our realtor had never had something like this before.  Even her other short sales with far more hardship were slow and painful.

We listed the house and had a buyer in less than a week.  The bank told us how much we needed to get and we had more than that.  It took a few months to work out all the paperwork, etc, but this month we closed the sale, had the balance of debt written off, and even came a way with a nice relocation incentive.  All told about 4 months.

We even found a nice house to rent in a good area with more square footage and for less than our mortgage payment.  I know no one who has had it this easy.  Our realtor doesn't either.  I know others in the process who are struggling through in the typical fashion or through other similar relief options.

I did nothing to make this happen.  I have no special knowledge of real estate, and I am not a holy man.  There is only one explanation for this entire process:  I asked God to do it and he did.  I don't know why he might not do it for other people.  I'm not going to start making theological premises out of it.  Suffice to say it is not by works of righteousness which I have done.  But the credit must go to my God who claims to know and control all things and who promises to give us good things, and he did.

For Fidelity

I want to make a case for fidelity.  Most people don't really use this word in common speech, so it might not even register with clear definition for many people.  Simply put, it is the state of being faithful.  It doesn't necessarily refer to marriage, though that kind of fidelity is probably what comes to mind if anything at all.  It can also mean close reproduction, as in video or sound...remember the old hifi's?  It just means being true to whatever you have committed to.  If you translate a book, it should be done faithfully.  If you deliver a message, if you offer assistance, if you give your word.  In all of these things we should have a high degree of fidelity.

Sadly, it seems this is grossly lacking in our society.  I know far too many people who shift and blow with trends and whims and emotions.  As I believe grace to be the central concept of Christianity, I don't condemn anyone for it.  I know we all have our issues and that God works with us wherever we are.

But I for one, take fidelity very seriously.  I value it.  I can't be happy when a husband or wife or mother or father leave.  I can't be happy when they find someone new.  I can't just shrug when someone leaves their faith.  I have to root for the white knight.  Give me the Princess Bride, not Dear John.  The Four Feathers, not the Watchmen.  I know life happens and we all have to muddle through.  I know good that has worked out after all kinds of bad faith cases.  Like I said, I'm not judging anyone or setting up some sort of system.  But I also can't pretend it doesn't bother me.

I want my words to be true; I don't use them loosely.  I want my commitments to be real; I don't make them lightly.  In this broken world, there are virtuous people who mean what they say and do what they commit to.  They still exist today.  But we don't value it.  We barely speak of it.  Fidelity is a virtue we need to reclaim.

As You're Told

I think I have come to a conclusion.  These things don't happen lightly for me.  It takes time and lots of consideration before I can really decide that something is strong enough to rest on.  I used to be much more impetuous about these things, but after seeing so many of my constructs torn apart, I sort of naturally fell into a pattern of reserving judgement.  So I'm talking several years of consideration on this one.

Even then, it could turn out to be false, so I defer always to the truth (dictionary) and the Truth (philosophical), as the case may be.  So ask me in 10 years and I may have walked away from this one.  But I am starting to think it's a sound idea.

This idea is that we each only have to do what God tells us to do.  I know that sounds stupidly simple.  But I mean each of us has only to do what God individually tells each of us personally to do.  Now I'll caveat that God speaks in different ways.  Always revealing in the way that we can best understand.  So, obviously we have to look circumspectly and evaluate and not be foolish about it.  But seriously, I'm not you, nor any one else.  As Jack said, we each only get our part of the story.  So why should we expect them to all match up?

Ok, I can hear the various religious archetypes screaming about it already, so I'll elaborate.

One might argue that we need to rely on the Bible.  We can't just strike out on our own whims!  Yes.  I agree totally.  So you and I can read the same verse and it will mean different things to us.  Who's right?  This argument is too often used to justify a proof-texted agenda.  And of course, everyone knows that your interpretation is actually plain and clear.  I'm talking about everyone else's.  In this case, I can only take what I am hearing from it.  You might get something else.  So my point is made in that you can assume your interpretation is for you and mine is for me.

Well that's just universalism!  No one's wrong, so no one's right!  No, it isn't.  I didn't say everyone would be right.  Just that we are where we are and that God will deal with us individually.  At times we might agree.  Sometimes people might all come together with a similar notion and accomplish some collective goodness.  At times we might not.  At times most of you might be on one page and one of you won't be.  So is that person supposed to defer what's on his heart because the majority, or the "authority" know better?  Or is this a Daniel, Elijah, John the Baptist moment where this one man is to stand against the majority and the powerful?  How could you tell?  If we are each free to act as God tells us, then this will never be a problem.

Well what if we are wrong?  Don't we need the covering?  If we're relying on God to guide us how deceived do you think we can get?  Is God so weak that he'll sit by while any liar corrupts His name and leads those who genuinely seek him astray?  You called on Him because he's able to do what you can't.  Well, time for him to make good, yeah?  Or is he so vindictive that he will point in a direction, leave us to get there on our own, and smite us if we get lost?  Not so!

The more I think about it, the only people who stand to lose from this mentality are the ones who build their lives around getting others to do what they want them to do.  I'm not slamming churches here.  If God told someone to go start a big church and to do it in a certain way, then I'm not going to stand in his way.  God will send the support and workers he needs to do it.  He won't need to coerce anyone.  Just make the need known, share the vision, and do what God's telling him to do.  But just because God told that guy to do what he is doing doesn't mean he's telling me to do it the same way.  And if I am not on the same page no good can come from forcing me.  I'll either do it for the wrong reasons or neglect what I'm being told to do.  This will only harm both causes since someone who doesn't get it can't possibly further your cause, and if I do get it, but am supposed to be doing something else, your cause has become a stumbling block for me.

Any way I look at it, I'm safe if I am responsible only for what God tells me in my heart to do.  He might say it through someone else.  He might split the sky with a debilitating vision.  He might whisper it in the depths of my soul.  He might make it known in a thousand ways.  But if I follow what I am being told to do, how can anyone ask me to do otherwise?  Our role should not be to guard and control people, but to teach them how to hear for themselves.  My problem with authority isn't that I don't want to follow it when I should, it's that you keep trying to be it when you aren't, bro.

Obstinate

Very often my own life illustrates Truth to me.  Often my relationship with my child tells me many things.  Just recently, as is her bent, she was getting an attitude when I tried to talk about something important for me, but which she doesn't care about or want to think about.  Now, I realize it was over her head somewhat, but not so far that she couldn't engage with me on some level.  But instead she chose to make it as difficult to proceed as possible.  To so ruin the moment that I didn't even want to talk any more.  So was I to force the issue and win the battle of wills?  Sometimes I do, but not in this case.  So I stopped talking.

That's when it hit me: that she was treating me very much like we treat God.  I wanted to share something that was from a deep part of me.  I wanted to reveal my heart to her and to know hers and to experience the real joy of close friendship.  But she was more interested in what I could do for her and nothing more.  Don't bother her with anything else or she'll do as poor a job and make it as miserable as possible until she gets her way or hates me for forcing things.  It's a fight that truly can't be won...not really.  I can enforce my will but I can't in the least make her love me...make her want to know me.

All the blessings of clean clothes, good food, shelter, protection, entertainment that I bestow upon her are lost.  They just are what she has always known.  They don't make her love me, though of course I would not stop them...sure check them from time to time, remove luxuries when necessary to coax behavior.  Of course, I will feed her, clothe her, comfort her, protect her always, even if she doesn't acknowledge it or deserve it.  But what I really want is the open and free relationship of enjoying each other's company.

I think God wants nothing different from us.

Padded chains

Today I was confronted with a scenario that makes me very angry.  Not angry at any one person, though it is tempting to assign blame to someone.  It's more an anger at the results of the situation which I'm sure no one wants.  People just can't often see how their words can be taken by others.


Someone was talking about people's lack of responsibility.  About how we often see things that need to be done and push them off on others, either intentionally or inadvertently.  This speaker fancies himself the one responsible for those he speaks to and because he has a burning desire to do certain things a certain way, feels others should follow suit...that it is all of our God-given responsibility to do things this way.  They aren't bad things in themselves, and his motives are to help people I think, but it's that sort of subtle poison that really gets me fired up because it is the most damaging.  Here's why:

I know for a fact that there was at least one single parent listening who is constantly struggling to get by.  This parent has her hands full working and taking care of the family and trying to make it look like she's half-way together.  Throw in some messy personal circumstances and you have an all too common mix for a difficult life.  This parent finds solace in good friends and in helping others.  How great is that, rather than alcohol or other destructive behaviors!  Yet it is still a means of dulling pain that cannot yet be addressed directly.  So here she sits listening to this same talk of doing more and how God expects us to use our very last breath to do everything we possibly can for him.  What!

No way, man!  I won't buy it.  This lady needs less burden not more.  The first speaker was lamenting how God's people don't get up and do...well that's because you're trying to motivate them with whips and chains, Bro!  You can't just wrap the irons in velvet pads and call it Christianity!  Jesus set the captives free, his yoke is easy and his burden is light.  We could debate the interpretations of this all night, and I don't want to engage in that.  But I can say this.  No one is responsible for me but me, and you for you.  None of us have to do anything more than what God tells us each to do.  And that's different for each of us because we come from different places and need different things.  Try genuinely meeting needs instead of whitewashing your walls, man!  That's what people need.

No where did Jesus ever tell anyone, to go and join a team in some big organization and make sure they devote every last bit of energy to do menial tasks so some guy can preach at some self-righteous yuppie who cares more for clean carpet than the state of the people whose sweat and tears got it dirty in the first place!  It's all still working for God's approval!  This is twisted and this is what people hate about Christians!

And to my single-mother out there, I pray you forget every word.  Take some time, spend it slowly.  Be Mary instead of Martha.  God has it under control and doesn't need your help.  This guy wasn't talking to you.

Breathe

The Fan Base just complimented this blog, making me realize I haven't written anything for a while.  In reading back over recent posts I see that it is strangely prophetic of things happening now.  This should not be strange.  We're just blind to the winds, tides, currents of time and circumstance.

God has indeed been working miracles in my life recently.  We prayed that he would work his will and glory and he is.  I don't want to say more now.

I've also been learning some new things about how to relate to God and others.  One that I will repeat from Wayne Jacobsen, whom I've mentioned before.  I had never really examined the Prodigal Son story.  Sure we all know the typical lesson from it about the kid who squanders his wealth and ends up crawling home only to be welcomed.  But we leave out two main points of the story.  One is the father who acts like no human father we've ever known.  Who gives an inheritance before he's dead?  Who allows his son to squander himself and his resources?  We'd call him a bad parent who didn't control his kid through other means.  And then he isn't the least bit angry when the son returns.  Not even a scolding or knowing look.  This is a picture of how God loves us, and I wonder if my notions of parenting aren't wrong in light of it?

Then there's the other son who doesn't run away.  He is angry about the prodigal and the reception of him.  He says he has slaved away for the father and got nothing for it.  I used to identify with this son.  I did the right things.  I followed the rules, and I was supposed to be so selfless as to not be miffed at the bad kid getting the party?  I thought it was a flaw in me.  But if we look at the response of the father a little differently it makes so much more sense.  This son wasn't doing right either.  The father says you are with me every day and can have these things any time.  But that son hadn't because he'd been so busy trying to be good...to run things for the father.  The Father is basically saying the son could have had that calf and the party any time.  He just hadn't.  It reminds me of that stupid pizza commercial from years ago where the scout master wants to pay for the free pizza in the buy-one-get-one.  He and the clerk go at it that he'll keep getting extra free pizzas that way because a free one comes with every payment.  Just shut up and take the free pizza!  You can't work it off.  God doesn't need our help.

I now believe this story represents God and his relation to those who are far from him and those who are closer.  Both miss the point.  One takes the good things he's been given and squanders them to his own destruction and fears to return because of the judgement he deserves.  The other works to earn his keep even though the entire wealth has been at his disposal the whole time.  But the father wants only to love and give to his children.

So then, how do we reconcile the Old Testament Vengeful God image?  I don't know.  I don't think it can be systematized.  Wayne suggests that it might be a case of mistaken motives.  Rather than reading everything as obey or else, perhaps it is saying, in me, you'll be able to...  In other words, it's more like in me, you will honor your father and mother, you will not be jealous, etc.  and wrath is a way of purifying sin from within us.  It's not a new idea.  The view of sin as disease needing cure has been around a long time.  It fits so well when you start applying it.  Even Jack's idea of hell being locked from the inside is built along these lines.  I don't want to get into the theology of it.  That is to miss the point.

The point is this:  God does all the work.  We can't change ourselves, save ourselves, or do anything to get rid of that which destroys us.  But God loves us and wants us to love him freely.  The rules are for two purposes: 1. show us what is destroying us by defining how we fail, and 2. warn us of how certain things will destroy us.  The true power of Christianity, which is as otherworldly and crazy sounding now as it was 2000 years ago is that we don't have to do anything.  Just open myself to the reality, the mere possibility even, and breathe.  Let that love become real to me.  Then I'll begin to love him back.  And that's what he wants.  Not obedience, not sacrifice, the love of his children.  He delights in us and in raising us.  I want to live like this.

Can't

This is one of those words. You hear people say things like, "Can't isn't part of my vocabulary." and other quippy phrases that have been recycled ad nauseum by every dumb jock that ends up in front of a camera. It's popular to think positively, and that is not totally invaluable, as cleche as it has become.

Even Christians have absorbed that mentality. It isn't unfounded. "I can do all things..." and so forth. But we shouldn't ignore the other side of can't. It's an essential side that is so unpopular that Christians very rarely ever bring it up.

The truth is that Christianity starts at can't. It is the genesis of the Christian. Before the power of the saving faith can be realized, we first have to give up. The seed has to fall to the ground and die before the tree grows. To follow Christ is to understand our need for Him; to know that we can't make it on our own. Make it to heaven...sure. But I mean more practically than that. We can't get by well in life without Him.

Recently someone debated against my assertion that every Christian must first be broken. They raised good points and I realize how they got to their conclusions, but I think our disagreement was more semantic. However, I do admit that we can't judge. I am not saying that those who have had a seemingly middle-class Christianity aren't really Christians. How could I know? What I know is what I have experienced...what I have witnessed, to reclaim the term the Evangelicals have destroyed. To wit, that the moment of deepest power comes to me and many others I know and have known at the moment when we give up.

Often, for someone like me, that realization comes far too late or far too early. Far to late because I am apt to drive myself into the ground before letting go of a stubborn idea. And far too early because, in other circumstances, I am apt to not even try. But in that moment when I truly realize my inadequacy and step aside...there is the amazing reality of God.

I have been practising it lately. Radically giving over to God, that is; consciously opening a space to let Him do what He will. The awesome thing is He has not yet even once failed to do something. It's as if He's been standing there listening to me talk about Him and what I would like Him to do, and just waiting on me to finally ask Him directly. I'm not going to build some theorum or process out of it. It's a living relationship that I am grossly undercapable of understanding. But this is what I'm seeing.

Next for me is to learn how to give credit where it's due. Not vague assents, not euphemisms that could imply God without offending those who choose not to see it that way. Not luck. Not "these things happen." Not "clean living", or a "charmed life." If God has done something I should say just that. How did it happen? Because God did it. Not because I'm special, but because I surrendered to Him and let Him work what He said He would work.

I'm going to keep trying this as long as I can hold onto it in my head. God keep me from distractions that squeeze it out.

As a friend and mentor (whom God incidently used in spite of himself...only proving my point even further) once said, "I think I can, I think I can. No! I don't think I can. In fact, I think I probably can't! But God can."

Child

I read a lot of things. I look for Truth in all places. One thing I've learned is that not one prescription fits everyone. There are ultimate Truths, but below that there are so many variations. Ecology teaches us this too. There is not one single path, not ten, but thousands, millions of interactions that make up any system. Grasping this is liberating in one sense, but difficult in another.

It is liberating because of just what I'm saying...people are built differently. It is liberating to me because I find it hard to be certain that one way is right...how do I trust that it is? What if it's false? This is not just a simple question as it might seem to those who think linearly. For example, suppose we trust something because it came from a trusted source, but what if the trusted source learned it wrong and is in himself mistaken or deceived without meaning any harm? What if the source conveyed it right, but I misunderstood, or misheard, or forgot something important...all of which we do as humans every day. We all have. If you trace this out far enough, there is no end, no knowledge, no surety...only doubt and oblivion. It's called nihilism and this is my hell. I lived in it for years.

True to form, I didn't escape it by finding the right path. There are no paths. Just a jungle, living and wild and trackless. I didn't even escape. I was pulled out by a force beyond myself. A force with a face, and a body, and a voice, and a personality. I don't understand how, I barely believe it. But I know someone reached into...no not reached into...exploded like nuclear holocaust...manifested in me. If I did anything, it was nothing more than a whisper, like Harry's soul floating up toward a dementor. It was a primal cry...but even that may have been nothing more than the aura, the pretremor of the blast that was already occurring from this God arriving.

Anyway, I digress. Knowing that things are not so linear means I don't have to find the right way. I just have to be in the right way...if that makes any sense. I don't have to worry that I'm not on the exact path of the millions that intertwine with millions more intersections by which I might accidentally slip off the right path. I know we teach faith that way, but we misuse the narrow way metaphor. So for someone like me, I don't have to fret that at each of those junctures I might go astray because as long as I'm on the course toward the end goal, I'll get there one way or the other; over, under, or around, I'll arrive at the end result. This is liberating if you think like me.

It's difficult as well because there is no way to know for sure. It's hard to trust anyone or anything. Do I take action, or wait? Go or stay? Do more, or less, or make no change? I can read all kinds of stuff about how to decide, how to follow God, how to give things to God. But it's all just part of the jungle. Is the confidence of these authors faked, or genuine? Is the source of it real or imagined? Is it God or self-help in a Christian wrapper? It leaves me wanting something sure and unable to find it. I just want a road sign. Something indisputable and direct. But you don't find that in the real world. These are human inventions and humans are fallible.

So in times like these, I find myself sinking into that black mire again as I become more and more paralyzed the more I try to discern. That's when I can only cry out again. I can't figure it out. If you can that's great, and I'm happy for you...really I am. But I am the lost two-year old crying in the aisle. I can only stand there and wail until my Daddy finds me and picks me up.

God of Mosh

I recently went to a place that had a session about spiritual experience in the charismatic sense. While not rising to the point of "charismania" as in people falling over and such, it was something different.

I kept an open mind. But the belief that "speaking in tongues" (meaning jabbering unintelligible and repetitive syllables) is a sure mark of the presence of the Holy Spirit on someone is hard for me to swallow...pun intended. Now I love these people. I know many of them and I have not found a more genuine, giving, loving group anywhere. I'm dead serious about that. But I don't know about this thing.

Sure people will come up when you repeatedly ask them to with music playing and hype to excite them. Who that genuinely wants to know God wouldn't hazard the experience if it truly was real and the excitement makes us feel bold. But people dance on tables at bars and go crazy at concerts too for the same reason...even nondrunk people. I've seen it.

So I was there and part of me wanted to try it too. Just to see if it would occur beyond myself. I'm a skeptic really. But I didn't go because I hate being pulled into something I don't want to do and once up there, sure enough, experienced people came up and were asked to start praying in tongues with each person until the new people started. This is mass hypnosis at it's classic! You get four people who obviously want something to happen and are emboldened by the hype and then have modelers right in their ears encouraging them with things like, "hamshalasonda amelashonda" said over and over again. It just sounds hebraic. Others use different sounds. Of course they'll feel the urge rise up and begin to do it. But if I didn't, then I'm refusing the Spirit or something. I just couldn't do it there.

Now I think there is a possibility that it might be real. If so, it's never happened to me, though I know I've had spiritual experiences which are ranked pretty intense by people who study these things. Even others who are far more active and prominent for God haven't done it. Does that mean they're missing something? Obviously if jabbering like that is a real spiritual experience it isn't one that indicates any kind of status. So what might it be?

I think I know. Whether inspired by God or just part of the human condition, it is a release. It is an unburdening of the spirit simply by letting things go for a time. This I have experienced. But for me it isn't jabbering. It occurs in movement.

I remember the first time I discovered dance. Just free expression through movement. I was hooked. But it wasn't until I entered a mosh pit that I had what I would truly call a spiritual experience. I'm not kidding! If people can jabber (I actually heard someone saying "blah, blah, blah" as their "spiritual language") then I can thrash. You see, it isn't about hurting people or any of the other things you might have heard...though that can occur. At the best moshes, it is simply unbridled physical expression. Bodies moving and giving kinetic voice to the passions inside them. Everyone has a different "language" or style. Some lyrical, some angry, some bouncy, some vertical, some horizontal, some arms, some legs, some heads. Bodies impact because they are sharing the experience. Just like mystic tribal ceremony pain is ignored, not even felt in the euphoria. Truthfully, I can't wait to do it in front of God. To stand in His manifest presence and hear the music of all music and let it all go. Even David moshed wildly in his underwear in shear joy!

I found God in a mosh pit. I have felt the Spirit descend upon me and I have moved uncontrollably, untiring, for sustained periods of time which I am not even aware of.

And it's not just moshing. Later, after that scene had closed down in my area, I orbited into gothic circles and found similar experience there in a more raving and technical style, yet still as free and released and unique.

Now I thank God for this gift, as He is the giver of all good things. I also recognize that most of the people around me were not doing it for Him and may even outwardly reject Him. But that is precisely His mercy in action. He gives His release even to those who do not deserve it. We are all brothers in the pit. One unity.

Of course I've seen it perverted and usurped, but a good pit will even recapture that from those who would destroy the purity of it. And even some bands were good about preserving their pits as places of joy and release rather than perversion and destruction. But isn't this remarkably like "speaking in tongues", down to the guidance from the pastor and the order preserved by the crowd?

So as I was sitting there meditating on this in the midst of the cacaphony, I felt a slight uplift. An urge to release myself. But it was not to speak. The only urge I had was to tear up. I wanted to rip down the stage, knock people over, tear the cords from the horrible singers mic and keyboard. I didn't hate anyone. I wasn't mad. I just wanted to wreck the place. Why is that? It scares me somewhat, though I know it would probably have abated as soon as the pain from the first punch through the drywall set in. I would only have really gone ape if they had tried to restrain me and make me participate...then people would have gotten hurt, but that is for other reasons which I won't digress into now.

I truly don't know why that feeling comes over me. I have had only two reactions in a church setting when I let it go. First is uncontrollable sobbing. I mean deep, nose running eyes wet heaving sobs. The second is the urge to go wild, to take the place apart. Is that an indication of my true self, or a deep seated flaw in my personality? i truly don't know. But I trust my God to handle me. And I feel His pleasure when I can be so free.

As for speaking in tongues in that sense, I'll have to continue being skeptical until someone can help me understand one on one or until God drops me on the floor babbling myself. I ask that He will show me if it is real.

How Could You

I don't usually post this kind of thing, but I think I need to get it off my chest. It hits me time and again and I have never been able to come to terms with it.

I once knew a group of people that changed my life. I learned from them, they helped form me into the adult I am, though they probably didn't realize the impact they were having. Truthfully, it wasn't all the people, but the context of the group. We shared a faith that was a breath of fresh air to me. Having been raised in a much more stifled religious community and questioning it, I met these people who lived what I wanted. Faith was central, but conformance was not. What was sacred was, what wasn't was disregarded. Tradition for its own sake was abandoned. We lived and shared many things together. Over a few years people came and went and the group ran its course as they all tend to do. I was even one of the advocates to let it go once the end was apparent. This is all good and I take no issue with it.

What I do take issue with is something which I have never been able to convey, partly because I am too passionate about it to control my emotions, even more than a decade later, and partly because I don't want to hurt anyone, and partly because I am always afraid I am wrong. This is the fact that so many have forgotten their first love. They have turned away from that free and beautiful faith that defined us into all manner of apostasies and even perversions of varying degrees.

Those about whom I write (should they ever read this [which is highly unlikely]) know that I mean these terms literally and not with the usual religious connotations. So that apostasy is a falling away from what they once believed and perversion is any twisting of truth. I say this because I want to be very clear that the cultural lines this group recognized were not the same as most of popular Christianity, though theologically we were very orthodox.

How could you do this? How could you express so tearfully your pains and your hope? How could you plead so passionately for God's will? How could you speak so boldly about the truth? And then reject it.

We all have doubts. We all have seasons of warm and cold, wet and dry, mountain and valley. But you yourselves claimed and proclaimed this and that God is big enough to handle it.

I would think this a season, but to see such utter rejection is too much! You make light of God's mercy and forbearance. To completely think it false?! To reject even his very existence?

If you are hurt because something went bad for you and you did not receive the help you expected, admit it and we can move on; God's arms and mine are waiting wide for you. If you believed wrongly and think differently because of some reasoning, we can work through it. But don't throw out the baby, the tub, and the bathroom with it! If you believed it once there is something to it still. Perhaps the sticking point you have is valid and your old belief system needed to be razed. But the One that drew you is still there. He is real. Don't you remember? Don't you feel the longing in your soul? Or if life has hardened you so much, do you not at least remember the feeling of longing and the satisfaction of feeling His presence?

Or were you just such a good liar? Did you fool me and others into thinking your words, motives, and actions were real? Perhaps you think that is the truth...but I don't believe it. While you might think you are so good at lying, I know from my own experience that we rarely are as good at it as we think. I saw through you. I knew what was real and what was put on more than you think. Chances are many of us did. And there is something lovely and fragile and light in your heart of hearts. This thing is the spark of the real you.

Don't forget it. I stand here waiting, praying for you. It was real. I was there. Even if you doubt it now, I was there and stand here to confirm that it was not a sham. I was there when God spoke through you all. I saw glimpses of your true self. You are the Forgiven. There is nothing to hide from, nothing rejecting you. I am standing here waiting for you and I'm not alone.

I made it

I have recently been struck over and over again with how many of our problems are of our own making. We contrive some system or institution, which becomes so ingrained that we don't want to change from it and many can't imagine anything else. Then we see problems in it and begin to solve them by more contrivances. It's like putting sugar in tea and then inventing a machine to make the tea unsweet.

In another example, I have been wrestling for the past 6 months with a 96 page permit from one government agency to the agency I work for. The permit is to operate a storm sewer system. The permit stipulates 90 pages of things we have to do to ensure that the system doesn't pollute surface waters. We have to report back to the agency that issued it all the ways we are complying. So I have been going around to various departments in the agency I work for who don't in the least think about stormwater and trying to tell them they have to comply...which of course they ignore, so I have to figure out how the stuff they are already doing fits the very specific things the permit tells us to do. All the while not actually doing anything to prevent pollution from really getting in the water.

Why do we need the permit? Because the way we build storm sewers lets pollution get into waterways? Why do we need storm sewers? Because our cities and vehicles aren't built around the natural drainage. So where does the pollution come from? From the way we build the cities via the way we build the storm sewers. This problem was realized in the 1970's and many things have been cleaned up, so it isn't hopeless. But in this case we don't want to do anything different because it is hard to change the laws and rules about building which we created for ourselves. So instead we create permits that don't do anything but create paperwork and massive programs that pretend to comply with it. And when a rational group of people found out and recently sued the government for not actually cleaning up the pollution and won, the result was an even more complex permit requiring things that look like we're doing something without really having to which results in even more complex compliance programs to look like we are complying with the permit that wouldn't result in fixes even if we really did everything it asks for.

The crazy thing is we could sum up the entire body of law in one sentence: Keep the water clean. But enter the lawyers and they say how clean, what does clean mean, what does keep mean, endlessly trying to avoid simply doing what common sense tells us to do.

I recognize this is an over-simplification...but at the root, the problem is that the system is an over-complication. Be polite, share, keep things clean, don't hurt people even accidentally. Endlessly chasing pillow and plate is the way of the sinful world and that's bad enough. But we go so far beyond even just chasing those things.

So how do I get off this train? I think I have to own the problem first of all. Getting off is not so hard if I were not constantly over-complicating. Even the very device I'm using to type this
is part of that over-complication...and I have a free OS on a rock-bottom no-contract service. All I have to do is walk away like Francis. But I keep cutting away small things without just biting the bullet and letting it all go. Trying to find ways of edging toward the thing without actually having to go there. Fears, paradigms, lies, and temptations.