Man of Peace

Sometimes things get away from us before we notice them.  I'm convinced most bad things start as good ideas that get perverted in the application...probably by small unnoticeable steps.  I recently found myself being quite tense and angry.  Every little thing began to bother me.

Fortunately, I rather quickly realized that it wasn't a problem with the entire world, but with me.  Among the quite probable multiple errors I made in this, one I noticed was that I felt as if I was resisting a constant tide.  It was me standing strong, fighting forward, alone against the fray...metaphorically, in my mind.

Like I said, I don't think this is wrong in itself.  I think we need more people who stand up for what is right, demand that as far as their influence reaches, things are done well and honestly.  The probelm is this is very tiring, alienating, stressful.

The truth is, I don't have to fix everything, including myself.  In fact, I have to fix nothing.  The yoke should be easy, and the burden light, not the opposite.  Funny how fighting to take off burdens becomes a burden in itself.

But I don't want to dwell on the principles, I want to talk about the specifics in this case.  I am laying down my arms.  I have misunderstood the militaristic imagery of the Bible in my own way.  I have realized that I can't be any kind of hard-minded.  This includes how I think of myself.  I am shedding the Holy Knight's armor for the friar's habit.  I no longer want to be the warrior monk, not even the standoffish Ranger exuding a watchful quiet that whispers of latent danger.  I want to be Brother Elias and Lawrence.  Bombadil.  Unaffected by the churning of the world. 

I don't mean to close myself off to the world, but to approach it differently.  I had become so focused on defending my flock that I lost sight of the fact that the flock isn't in any real danger.  Not circumstantially, but existentially, catagorically.  They are safe because they have been removed from the possibility of harm.

I love the epic story so much, it's easy to cast myself in that light.  But the truth is, the danger has been eliminated.  Truthfully, there never was any real danger.  God has always been in control, nothing occurs outside his will, and even the most dastardly schemes to do harm are woven back beyond impotence to actually work good and the will of the Father.  This is the Gospel.  The world is restored.

The people I most admire overcame terrible circumstances and even walked into horrific death, not as steely gladiators, afraid of nothing, but as simple people so convinced that the world had been set right that even their present suffering was not a blip on their radar.

This is who I want to be.  And I can't do that with my fist clenched and my fangs bared.  So I'm laying down my guard, laying down my weapons.  I'm sure there is a place for those feelings, but I can't use them right now.  They are too tainted, carry too much possibility of consuming me.  So while I may still feel those urges, I am offering myself up to a new perspective and can only pray that I do not go the way of Mendoza in the Mission.  I want to be a man of peace.

What this means for me is that I will not associate myself with or flood myself with images of fighting.  I will not style myself that way any more.  My physical training will shift: rather than preparing to face the foe, to be ready to snatch the helpless from the jaws of the beast, I will move out of joy and celebration.  I will look for and acknowledge the good.  I am choosing a path of peace...not pacifism, but understanding conflict, it's roots, and moving beyond it.  I have to learn to let God fight for me and not the other way around.  I think I'll find that there will be no fight to have because all the variables are in God's control.

I'm sure this makes little sense and is far too internal to be of much use to anyone else.  But this is the key to my cage.  I'm opening the door and walking out to find it was never locked.

Cages

A couple of things are rolling around in my head.  One has to do with joy.  What is it?  I've read the definition, but it seems inadequate.  Maybe I've just not experienced it.  I know peace (which is an inner quiet).  I know happiness (which is dependent on circumstances).  But I can't say I've ever known an abiding gladness...Perhaps I have, there was a time I think I had it.  Things weren't perfect, but I just seemed to be glad, positive, most of the time.

Though, it seems this had much to do with the circumstances, which would pull it into the realm of happiness, right?  I distinctly remember frustrations and difficulties then, so I know this isn't a rosy memory (though I don't have those anyway).  Truly, I tend to see always the bad, so to remember a time of happiness that was longer than fleeting is something.

Just recently, I have felt a deep need for joy.  I even almost felt it yesterday, but it escaped me before I could fully feel it.  It was like a shadow of it, or a snatch of music heard indistinctly.  And then it was gone.

This transitions nicely into the other thing in my head...I'd wondered how they would relate.  I have blogged previously about my naturally darker nature.  I have to accept it.  I have tried to change it, ignore it, etc.  But it is part of me, and this is not necessarily a defect.

So what stands in my way?  I think it has to do with cages, fetters.  I despise them.  I hate being tied down or restricted.  Not all restrictions; some are necessary, I know that.  But the unnecessary tangles of life, those I hate.  Mortgages, bills, tenuous family obligations.  These are drudgery and torture.  Give me one day when I am stuck at home with nothing to do and unable to leave because of something like, my son is out playing and too young to leave alone...and I'm prowling the floors like a tiger, looking for anything to occupy the restlessness.  Read, watch pointless TV; this only goes so far.  Sleep; that too only covers so much.  This is why I make so many things with my hands...anything to occupy my mind when I can't go and do. 

My wife seems to like those times.  Relaxing, she calls it.  It's torture.  I want to rip the walls down.  Sometimes I'll go outside, but I'm surrounded by acres and acres of more little cages with small caged streets and bigger caged streets and fences, all hemming me into this world of cushy padded nothing.

Granted, it is good to be safe and secure.  This is a blessing I would not withhold from anyone.  I think what is missing in it is meaning.  Real depth.  Challenge.  I am so in love with adventure stories, books, movies.  I want to be swept away on some quest or mission.  I want every moment to feel vibrant and real.  Then when I return home, I'll want to be here.  To rest and enjoy the peace.  But eventually to go back out into the world again.

I do not pretend to have missed my calling.  I am what I should be, or on the journey toward it.  But at times like these, especially around holidays when I am sitting around endlessly, it gets to me.  I want my family to join me.  But they are not that type.  I can't make my wife into what she is not.  My son will join some, but is also content to sit and putter.

I work my life to be as free as possible, but everywhere, people throw fetters on.  We're not good citizens if we aren't chained down a hundred ways.  And so I sit, and prowl, and make something, and prowl.  I may even get fed up and disappear for a short time, but the chains of responsibility will pull me back again.

I will step out on the road and wish for something to happen that breaks the chains.

Actually...I think I've just hit something else.  My anxiety from being around other people comes precisely because I am so looking for this kind of life.  I feel like the Ranger sitting cloaked in the corner, ever watchful, ever ready to strike, to move, to go.  But outside is nothing but padded walls and fat docile pets.  With expectation of something more and no where to direct it, everywhere becomes a source of irritation, anxiety.  It's like the tiger who attacks the one who feeds it, or an innocent bystander.  I just want out of the cage.

Power

Power can never be taken.  It can only be given.  This is absolutely true.  To understand it, though, we have to understand power.

Merriam-Webster defines it as 1. ability to act or produce an effect. 2. possession of control, influence, or authority over others. 3. physical might.

I'm obviously talking about definition 2, but in a less direct way, my statement also applies to 1 and 3.

So regarding power over others, this power can only be given with the consent of those over whom it is exercised.  We don't like to think of it that way because too many of us lay down and roll over to let people have power over us.  We want to feel excused, that there was nothing we could do.  But this is false because no one can physically make you do anything you do not choose to do.

Actually, there's two exceptions.  They can make you hurt and they can make you die.  But they still can't make you do anything they want you to do.  What we call oppression is really just strong coercion.  An oppressor finds something we want and attempts to control our receipt of it contingent upon us doing what they want.  This doesn't always have to be negative.  Many rulers know that positive reinforcement is better than negative in many cases.  In this case we don't tend to call it oppression, but the principle is the same.  We want the reward, so we comply.  Parents use this all the time.

Another side of this coercion complex involves vilifying those who don't comply and making negative examples of them.  This plays on the human tendency to conform and really just greases the wheels of the coercive process.

But it doesn't always work.  If a person or people lose the fear of the consequences, the power is gone.  Unfortunately in our society, one of the largest coercive factors is the idea that death is the ultimate evil.  If life is to be preserved at all costs, the power is handed over.  It simply becomes a matter of the degree to which it is exercised.  But if death is not feared, the ruler is grasping at straws because even pain is not so effective a coercion simply because no ruler can hurt enough people.  sure it may work one on one, but usually this occurs only after someone has already given over too much power in the first place.

Here's some examples.  Ever wonder why Native Americans were not enslaved by the Europeans?  Why would they go to the trouble and expense to catch and ship over Africans when there was an ample supply of primitive people right in their own backyard?  The answer is that they tried.  The problem was that Native Americans were (and still are) an independent and defiant people who do not hand over their power.  Even if one could be taken alive, he or she would not work.  Give them a tool and they'd put it through your head.  Slack the chain and they'd wrap it around your neck.  Pen them up and try to break them, and they'd simply starve to death or take their own life before giving in.  Where do you think that fierce independent streak of American culture came from?  Indians weren't destroyed.  They were absorbed.  The distinct cultures were largely lost, but I am a living example of the assimilated, but not conquered people who have left an indelible mark on American culture.  Truly, modern American culture IS a hybrid of Native and European and African influences.  But I digress.

Secondly, the Christian martyrs, both ancient and modern.  They came from the dominant cultures in which they were found, but lost their fear of death and even pain because of their faith.  While they didn't often resort to violent resistance, they were never conquered and thousands have refused to submit to countless regimes that violated their beliefs.

Third, Muslim martyrs.  The reason Islamic terrorism is so scary is that it can occur anywhere and from anyone.  A people who are not afraid to die do not need to submit.

But I also mentioned torture as often the result of having given up power and attempting to take it back too late.  The best example I know are the Nazi concentration camp victims.  Countless people sat by and watched as they gave up more and more power to the Nazi regime.  Then even when they were being hauled away, few resisted.  Some did.  But not most.

The Christian martyrs are not exactly in this state because they willingly submitted to the torture because of their beliefs in nonviolence.  Since it was willing, they weren't technically abdicating their power, but choosing not to exercise their power out of deference to God, whom they believed to be in control even in that time.  Some were miraculously rescued, others weren't.  But before you go trying to say this proves God doesn't exist or didn't favor them, remember what I said about death not being the ultimate evil.

I want to be clear, that I'm not downplaying the strength of the coercion.  I'm not judging anyone for acting or not acting in any way.  Until we're there, we can't say how we'd react either.  I'm simply pointing out that these were indeed cases where power was given and not taken.

I'm not even saying it is wrong to always allow someone power over you.  Certainly there are cases where it is wise, prudent, beneficial, and even good to submit.  The difference is the understanding of what we're doing.  It is voluntary submission.  No human has power over another by innate right.  It is ALWAYS by the consent of the governed.

This understanding should color our views of those over us.  It should also color our views of those under us.  Doubtless someone will quote the Bible passage about submitting to those in authority because God placed them there.  Yes.  I agree.  What does this have to do with my point?  I still have the choice to submit or not, for good or ill.  I still can't be compelled to do what a ruler says.  And if you are citing this passage, I'd like to also point out the many others about leaders whom God also took down...many through the violent and bloody hands of His people.  So it cuts both ways, pastor.  Are you so certain of which type of leader you are?

So where does this leave us?  Is there a way to act in society?  Yes, I think a mutual respect among all people, a servant leadership that understands it is just that, paired with a diverse and necessary body of others who are no less necessary and no less favored.  While this is an ideal that may be hard to reach (at least in the US), I suggest we at least reclaim the mannered equipoise of many cultures past and present:  Know you have less power than you think you do, and there's always a chance I could be more coercive than you, or at least willing to put you to the ultimate test of defending your power (i.e. I might kill you.)  So let's just be polite and we'll get along fine.

As for a better way, I think we have that as well.  God, being the prime source and beyond our influence altogether, has established that goodness and love flow from Him to us.  Goodness and love draw the recipient toward the giver.  Thus we comply not from coercion, but as a gift back.  It works in the human realm, we've all seen it.  Betrayal is universally denounced.  Good deserves good.  Love deserves love.  It sidesteps the whole power dynamic altogether.  This is how Jesus operated.  This is how many Christians operate.  It just had to start somewhere, and God took care of that for us.  Or rather, He established the universe that way, so we really have no other choice.  To defy it simply negates our own being.  A self-perpetuating system, no punishment necessary.

So I'll leave you with this.  If you are having to manipulate and strive to get people to do what you think they should, you're doing something wrong.  If you have to beg for money or tell people God won't bless them.  If you have to make lighthearted threats to get them to sign up for your program.  You are slipping into the power dynamic, which means you don't have the power in the first place.  Forcing that will be your undoing.

The only winning move is not to play.

Charlie

Here we are at holiday season again in the U.S.  It starts with Thanksgiving.  Which is a day to give thanks for all that we have through the year.  It is based in our earliest history as a nation.  Really, one of the founding events for Americans as a people...the merging of Native American and European cultures.

But in reality, it has become nothing more than a day to party.  Just like every other popular holiday here.  And American party means noise, alcohol, and a general excuse to act rude and slightly debauched in the name of "good cheer".  People have already started buying enough food to feed a developing village for a week.  Some are having dinners tonight.  Tomorrow the real feasting will occur.  Some people going to 3 or 4 feasts.

Then Friday following has become a day to consume yet even more as people flock to stores and fight to buy all the bait and switch deals.  I have never been to a store on "Black Friday" but I did go to one on Sunday after, last year.  Things were literally thrown around like a riot had occurred.  This is "celebrating".

And I'll have to go to some obligatory feast of my own (I'll only do one)...deciding which family group will feel most slighted if I don't go.  I'll see people I don't know and don't have anything in common with, other than some tenuous genetic connections.  I'll smile and be cordial and make polite excuses for not eating foods I can't eat and probably get sick from eating some things just to shut people up.

Christmas specials have already started in stores, on TV, everywhere telling me what I am supposed to do and feel and most having no concept of what the holiday really is...or rather no concept of what that means...I'm sure most actually know what it is about.

So now starts my least favorite time of year.  I wish I could just not participate at all.  The favorite holiday season of my life was the one I spent in Japan where most didn't know about my holidays and fewer cared.  I was able to keep them in my own way, sharing  peaceful and enjoyable time with my family and a few friends we shared our traditions with.  But unfortunately, here that is impossible.

I'll try not to be obviously negative so as not to ruin it for others...but maybe it's worth ruining.  Am I doing those I care for a disservice by not expressing what is hollow and wrong?

I have made certain stands, but they are to little avail against the tide of prescribed consumption and obligatory "cheer".

So if you see me through this season, give me a little nod that you understand.  I know I'm not alone.  And if you disagree, that's fine.  You keep it your way and leave me to keep it mine.  You've got the whole culture with you.  The least you could do is give me a little space to salvage what good I can scrounge out of it without judgement or pressure.

Roots

I have been reading another George MacDonald book.  Uncle George does not disappoint again.  This one, I've been putting off since it doesn't seem like something I'd like at first blush.  It's called the Vicar's Daughter, and it's described as a Victorian novel.  Hmmm.  Need I say more?

But as usual, when the time is right things fall into place and I went ahead to read it.  Also, per usual, I found that the stereotype of "Victorian" is far from the truth.  Certainly this book was written in the Victorian era.  As such it has a certain defined social code, etc.  But humans are human and I find all the fun, struggles, loves common to all people.  However, literary critic I am not, and so I won't belabor this.

What really has taken me is the thorough similarity of the characters with my own time and viewpoints.  I don't mean this to say I have an old-fashioned mindset.  I'm far from a traditionalist,and am not very sentimental.  But I grew up in a prosperous country on the teeter of decline, in a middle class family, right as the notions of an older generation were passing away from our culture.  I moved naturally from this to a countercultural worldview we call punk.  I grew up into a productive member of society with a family, though not shedding my ideals to do it.  This book focuses on just the same class of people in the same situation.  What I call punk, they call Bohemian, but the description is almost identical...obviously, not the appearance specifically, nor the music, etc.  But the ideals and the manifestations of those ideals are the same, even down to the shockingly reproachful clothes .

But even more than this is the similarity in faith.  While I had known my views were part of an unbroken chain of truth and truth-seekers extending back into prehistory, I had not known that it was so well documented and articulated in such a similar way.

Of course, I should not be surprised.  If Truth is Truth, it ought to manifest itself in very similar ways where conditions are similar.  And that is what I find here.  In fact, I've felt this once before, when reading Augustine.  At that time, I attributed it mostly to an above average translator whom I thought must have been able to make the ancient writing open to modern ears.  But now, I'm reading native English, close enough to my own dialect as to be totally intelligible in the writer's own words.  So I am forced to see what was obscured before.

In fact, the book sits so well with me that I'm finding it nearly a handbook for my place in life right now.  Things I have thought, said, done, wished for, are here presented in very nearly the exact same way more than a hundred years before.

I had previously blogged about uncanny similarities in MacDonald books.  But now I am certain that time has no meaning for those of us who live with eternity in view.  I do not doubt that Uncle George is presently aware of this very blog entry and my connection with his work.  For all I know, he may be communicating to me from his books, or we may share a spirit in some fashion.  Perhaps through the same mechanism, albeit a far more profane version of the connection between John the Baptist and Elijah.  Though this is more likely a metaphorical fancy than actual fact. Nevertheless, I shouldn't be surprised by this kind of connection amongst those who live in Christ.  Aren't we parts of one body?

Anyway, what I'm taking away from this book is uniquely mine, and too much to recount here.  But perhaps the greatest thing is that I now feel certainly confirmed in my brand of faith.  If it has existed for so long in so precisely the same fashion, I can safely put aside doubt.  I had feared it was my own personal religion built of my peculiar brand of rebellion and whimsy, well fortified with bricks of prooftext and the mortar of complex self deceptions.

Now I can safely stand out on it and believe I am not alone and not in error.  There have been, are, and will be those who are made like me, believe like me, and I am confident enough to cast my lot in with them for good or ill.

Thank you George.  And thank you God.  The former for being the instrument and the latter for being the wind that sounds it in answer to my prayers, even across the nonexistent gulfs of time and space.  When I meet you face to face, we will not in any way be meeting for the first time.

Maker

A friend recently made a relatively offhand comment about the current Maker fad. It struck me, since I make a lot of things myself.  It's true, there is a current faddy popularity in "Making", as it is called.  In typical fad fashion, it's got it's own jargon, etc. In short, it simply refers to people making things on their own.  It's different from crafting, or carpentry, or DIY in that making usually refers to technological or machine types of things, but they're all related.

I think the fad is being fueled somewhat, at least in my friend's circles, by forward thinking librarians and teachers who are rightfully trying to adapt outdated institutions to a world of increasing technology, consumerism, and independent and instant access to information.  It is a fallacy of our thinking to believe things will stay the same.  But the truth is, many of our seemingly permanent institutions are not nearly as permanent as we think.  For example, public school as we know it is only about a century old, and high school was not even common until the mid 20th century.  So in short, these places and professionals are trying to adapt to changing conditions...and this is good, even if they jump on fad trends in the process.

So, back to Making.  My friend comments that it's nothing new.  And that is right.  In fact, for me, this is part of the attraction.  You see, every culture once had an era when people understood the things around them in a way that we don't.  They crafted what they needed from the materials at hand.  Many cultures still operate in this way.  But our modern wealthy western culture has slowly distanced ourselves from this ability because of the unholy amount of readily available things to procure at great prices.  In fact, many people have turned shopping into a skill in itself.  But this falls far at the end of the chain of existence for these objects.  Back at the beginning there is still a person creating, designing, building, innovating, all of the stuff we buy.  Making is an attempt to back up to those earlier stages and understand manmade objects in a different way.  It's called Maker's Knowledge.

It's not some mystic understanding, it's just the ability to look at something and perceive the steps to constructing it.  For example, my Granddad was a Tarheel carpenter with no birth certificate and a 6th grade education.  To make something out of wood, he just needed a pattern...by which he meant a picture...not an exploded step-by-step drawing.  He could fathom the necessary steps to create it from just an image because he understood how woodwork was done.  I'm looking right now at a table he made me from a notebook sketch of a Japanese design I saw in which the table top is removable so a blanket can be placed under the frame. (In this way when it's cold, people's body heat is shared while they have a firm surface to eat, drink, or play games on...very efficient and cozy.  Some even put a small heater under the table to add warmth.)

Now, he's long dead, but I can do it with many things.  I can see an object in a store or catalog and build it myself.  Or even just dream it up and make it real.  Most of the furniture in my house is stuff I've built or modified to suit my needs.  Which leads to another aspect of Making: customization. But before I get into that, a bit more about Maker's Knowledge.

It isn't just about wood, as I said, Making refers more to technological or mechanically engineered sorts of items.  With these items, people are given a certain level of access.  A much smaller subset gains access to the 'repair and upgrade' parts of electronics.  But only the smallest fraction of people actually understand how to build it.  If it breaks, we just toss it and buy another one.  But without Maker's Knowledge, what's going to happen when replacements are no longer so easily available?  The objects will be lost along with the people who depend on them.  Not to mention, that without this knowledge, we are at the mercy of whoever has it.  We can only do what they allow us to do, for the fees they choose to charge us.  We are slaves and not free people.  We do not have access to the key means of production: the knowledge of how.  I'm not saying there's some grand conspiracy that creates this dynamic...it's simply the unintended consequence of a rich society with ample resources...but that's a whole other topic.  Here's an example closer to home.

Most people use a computer until it doesn't work.  Then they go get a tour of the new features of the latest offerings and find out "what they can do with it".  Then they buy it and adapt themselves to it's mode of operation until it again stops working.  They may have the merest understanding of how it actually works inside and may think there is nothing else to do about it.  That's just how it is, right?  Without special tools and years of high-level training, you'll never be able to build your own machine.  But this is entirely false.  I learned to build computers on my own, with self-study of advice from other Makers.  They are actually not so complicated at all.  Even the software is not so difficult.  With a little understanding, what was a black box which I simply had to expend funds on every few years has become a useful and beautiful machine that I can do anything with!  Now granted, I'm not coding from scratch...but I could with more study.  For my needs, I have found that components built by other Makers suit my needs just fine.  So I partake of their knowledge and share mine.  There's no threat in Makers sharing knowledge.  We all make what we need for ourselves and are proud to share, even happy to since our skills arise from joy.  Sharing knowledge is only threatening when our livelihood is tenuously built on others' lack.  Bad career choice, sorry.

So once again, we are led to the customization aspect.  Tools for the workers, not workers for the tools.  How many features of your phone or computer or blender do you never use?  How many times have you wished something did what it doesn't do?  Part of Making is to be able to create what you need and nothing more, but exactly what you need and nothing less.  It's a quest for harmony and balance.  Whether that be a device to take digital pictures from far overhead, a bicycle that fits your body, ability, terrain, and use, or a piece of furniture that perfectly matches and nestles into the space available for it.  You see, there was a time when most objects were like this.  You only had one carriage throughout your life and it was altered to meet your needs as they changed.  If you needed a table or a desk, you built it, or had someone build it, to fit the space and style and use.  It would be unlike anyone elses', an expression of who you are.  Making is an attempt to recapture this.

So granted, "making" and "makerspaces" and such are a fad.  But at the heart is a real community and real ideals.  Fads are often the vehicle by which ideals spread.  Sure, no one needs a one-string electric cigar-box guitar or bicycle that rides backward.  But in making them, people are learning new skills that apply elsewhere.  They're exploring new ways of thinking, new ways of living, and new abilities.  They are becoming more independent and whole, more connected to their roots, and to the roots of all people.  They are improving their own chances of thriving and perhaps even of surviving.

I think a true story will illustrate.  During hurricane Katrina, many people were trapped in attics and rooftops.  Many of them also had cell phones and video cameras.  One family videoed the devastation from their roof where they had barely been able to break through and now sat, the mother in total shock and nearly catatonic.  The father bemoaning the impending death that awaited them and pleading to no one for help.  Another family had gathered themselves and their neighbors into their finished attic with a full cooler of supplies and a full chest of tools.  They had freed their boat to float from the trailer and moored it to the roof.  Then they videoed as they called out to a fear-paralyzed family to get in an abandoned boat and float across to them.  When they got no response they set about rigging up a harness and pull line which they boated over and proceeded to haul the entire family across with them.  The first family thought they could always go get what they needed.  Life would never change and they never thought about it.  Until that illusion was shattered and they couldn't cope.  The second family had Maker's Knowledge.  They understood that they were capable and adaptable and they used those skills they had built.  They were happy and thriving even in a one of  the worst disasters the US has ever seen.

I'm not saying we're all going to face this kind of test.  But Making is beneficial even up through this type of problem.  At least, we get a custom life with unique and beautiful things, and develop some very healthy skills that keep body strong and mind sharp.  At most, we use our skills to better the lives of people who can't do for themselves.  There's no downside.  So bring it on.  Make, create, grow, innovate.  These are virtues and the more the better.

Afterburn

My last post was a rant.  I won't apologize for it.  It needed to be said.  But know that nothing on this blog is for show.  I post what I am wrestling with.  And I've continued to think about this.  Many points came out in the last post that I think could bear further explanation...Or rather, I want to talk about my history to help create understanding...see a previous post on that...perhaps then I will make more sense to those who don't get it and those who might think they get it can see how my ideas might differ or align with theirs.  Not that anyone is really reading this anyway, so who cares either way.  (Sidebar: thanks to the fanbase, I know both of you are reading.)

Where to start?  If you say you used to be a Christian, then you never were...or you still are.  It's not the kind of thing that can be undone.  It's not a system of beliefs.  It's not a culture.  It's not a bunch of fables and moralisms.  It's not a vague idea of the cosmic good.  It's not a magic hat that makes life good.  It isn't even to simply follow Jesus' teachings.  If you left it, then you never really understood it or if you really truly had hope in it and left over some disappointment, then you still are a Christian. 

You see, you can call yourself anything.  But when a person truly encounters the living God it changes things.  Things inside are different.  I'm not going to theologize and give you "3 signs you know you're saved" or any nonsense you might have heard before.  When you feel that Love call you and recognize who you are hearing, feeling, whatever, you know it.  There's no going back.  The job of the Church, which is people, not place or organization, is to stand beside you until you do know it.  Period.

I was raised in the typical modern Evangelical church.  I was fortunate to receive a good deal of training in the Bible.  I know it well.  I can argue the apologetics.  I was actually trained in persuading someone with the gospel...Literally, "if they say this, you counter with this."  It wasn't evil.  It was simply schooling in the classic sense.  I studied the arguments of great theologians and could cite the verses they used to answer heresies, etc.  The goal wasn't to brow beat people.  We never did that.  Just a principle that prudent study and in-depth knowledge of the Bible were weapons for life and salvation.  Think Allistair Begg, Bill Bright, Chuck Colson.  It's a whole world that you'd have to be in to understand.  I still have great respect for these people.

But I was also a depressive kid.  Serious for my age, with difficulty understanding the stupid kids around me.  Part of it I now know was due to a rare physical condition that was undiscovered then.  But part is simply my nature.  I began to see the fruitlessness of our shallow cushy lives.  I sank slowly into nihilism.  I knew that in the end, nothing we did mattered.  What would happen would happen.  Bad to good people, good to bad people.  Indifference to most.  Nothing made sense, so there was no meaning.  Read Camus' The Stranger to see what life is like from a purely nihilistic perspective.  It's terrifying.  I lived there.  Too apathetic to kill myself.  Pointless to strive.  Just waiting for something to kill me.  I drove my Jeep without doors and no seatbelts.  I laid on the double yellow lines of a bend in the road just hoping.  I sliced my arms and chest up just to feel anything.  I worked at a nursery and dug my arms into rose bushes, carried cactuses with bare arms so the needles would drive in.  This was a double benefit.  It woke up some sensation in me, and hid the knife slices.  I remember once, hanging from the rafters of the stockroom "to clean them".  I had swung out about 20 feet and dangled there two stories up with a broom in one hand.  I didn't care.  I even almost broke a kids neck for cutting in the lunch line.  I don't mean we got in a fight.  I mean he did it, didn't pay any attention to me, but was standing right in front of me where the line doubled back with back turned.  The adrenlaine flowed, my hands clenched and I was reaching for him when I realized what I was about to do and bolted out of there.    I ran out of the school and shivered in cold sweats for 20 minutes.  I used to smash my head into bathroom mirrors hoping they'd break and bleed my skull.  A school custodian caught me once.  He didn't know whether to pray for me or run me off.  Of course to everyone else, I was the perfect responsible kid.  Few saw it, few knew what to do, and few cared as long as I functioned in some fashion.

Somewhere in there I started having spiritual experiences, which you can read about elsewhere on the internet.  Just google cavvvp...all you'll get is me.  I didn't understand these things and it wrecked me.  I could barely hold together.  But in that world, Jesus found me.  He revealed himself as real in a way that was undeniable.  Either I had experienced what I did, or I was psychotic.

I learned that there were other people like me.  I met a bunch of the craziest punk people you could ever meet because the guitarist at my church also played music there.  In fact, that guitarist had a huge impact on me that I'm sure he doesn't even know.  He was one of the few people in that time who didn't judge.  Didn't put on a face.  He was a former drug addict from a rock band.  His wife was a drug addicted stripper.  He told me once that he'd seen our Elders' record collections, "and man they got all the same stuff we do." said even as they condemned me for being loose and rebellious.  So I began to distinguish the real from the hypocritical.  I saw those punk Christians ostracized when they came around.  I was told by the church next door to ours that "they didn't dispute my salvation, but only associated with churches of like faith and order" when I asked if their kids wanted to come to a party I was having for our kids.

I began to see that so-called Christians were the bulk of the problem!  We were the Pharisees!  So I left mainstream churches and joined the punks.  We packed the house.  Drug addicts, prostitutes, gay, gutter punks, homeless, hippies, new age, transgender, and just plain mentally disturbed.  We even had a church meeting in which we decided that someone was always going to bring a jacket just in case one of the strippers or prostitutes showed up in her work clothes!  I'm not kidding!  The pastor there became a friend and mentor.  He was a wreck of a person.  God love him and so do I.  His warts were apparent and he didn't shy from it. He was saved by grace and openly said what good was in him was from God.  And even now I will stand beside him at the Judgement and claim his as a friend, many of whom are there because of him. 

We invaded dark and sinister places.  We have seen God part crowds in Ybor, open dance floors in clubs.  I once sat in a wiccan coffee house that was run by not the nice kind of wiccan.  I have not experienced more spiritual warfare than in that place.  I could feel the oppression as we prayed for protection of my friends and others in the place...and this wizard was fighting us hard to drive us out and claim these people.  I could see it in his face.  He knew we were opposing him and neither of us said a word or gave an overt sign.  Just sat there silently praying while drinking some cheap brew.

But things change.  People are flawed.  Things run their course.  And this did.  People were lost.  Schisms happened.  Eventually we joined a friend's church.  I hit it off with this pastor who is still my mentor and spiritual director.  But I watched as several iterations of forcing two very different types of people together failed, leaving pain in their wake.  It wasn't for lack of trying.  The "normal" people just weren't comfortable with the grittiness of the others.  They couldn't see us as partners.  We were always projects.  The punks cloistered and refused to integrate because they knew they weren't wanted.  No one likes to be looked at like that, even unintentionally! And emotionally damaged people like many of these can't actually even handle it.  It crushes them, so they drive away good intentions and close the circle even tighter.

Time and time again, I've seen it.  Mainstreamers get some idea that they're edgy or cool and try to step into a world they don't get.  I have seen some notable exceptions.  But they are few and far between.


And not all of this type look weird on the outside.  Many would fit right in.  You eat, shop, and work right beside them.  I've even seen relatively normal people who are starting to discover this real, honest, classless faith continually wounded and turned away by churches.  The churches seek the majority in the "war for souls" and don't have time for the complaints, the dissenters, the ones who fall through the cracks.  Acceptable losses.  I emphatically stand up and defy that mindset.  No, never is one lost, not any are acceptable.  The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 to find the one.  I say the 99 should be looking too!  People will conflict.  But resources are probably there if you'd open your mind to look for them and step aside when it isn't you.  Why not partner instead of compete?  There's churches on every corner and they all act like they're the only one in the wilderness of lost people.  Here's an example of what I mean:

A wiccan couple came in to a mainstream church I worked at and introduced themselves as such.  Now why would they do that?  If they were just checking it out, they would simple come in like anyone else.  No one need know.  The reason they did it is because they were testing.  They wanted something and wanted to see how they were received.  I told people, come get me when they get here.  I'll talk to them.  I know what they believe and can welcome them.  I even pulled a little Paul and cited my qualifications to do so.  Of course, I wasn't worthy to do that.  Instead some "better qualified" pastor talked to them and they never came back.  No doubt he comforts himself that you can't win them all and they just must not have been ready.  Wow!  You sound like me.  I thought you were Evangelical?  If there's a tool in your tool box you have to make use of it!  That's being a good steward, dude!  Leverage everything, remember that sermon?  I even told you I was there so there's no excuse.  You just blew it, they could be going to hell because of it.

Thankfully, I don't believe it is up to us to save anyone.  So I can easily forgive this man and know that God is far greater than our feebleness.  He doesn't depend on us.  He doesn't.  But by the standard you mete, it is meted to you.  This man's own theology condemns him!

So where does this long ramble leave us?  I am a bridge.  I am an interpreter.  I can communicate across boundaries.  This is my gift.  I am pitbull, donkey stubborn and will not back down from what is right.  This is my gift.  I can love and forgive, but will not participate in what is not right.  I speak for my flock of black sheep.  I'm not the shepherd.  That's Jesus.  I'm just a sheepdog, and I'm not alone.  If anyone comes after my sheep, I'll bite.  If anyone inadvertently hurts my sheep, you'll hear me bark.  And if you're sitting out there lost, hurt, fending off the wild beasts, or being pushed around by the prettier sheep, just make what noise you can...I'm coming...and I won't leave until the Shepherd finds you.

Piercing

The description of this blog is that it is real and raw and unfiltered.  It is an attempt to process things I see, think about, encounter, etc.  As such it isn't really a good read, will never be popular.  But sometimes I look back at what I wrote and can see how it was prophetic...this doesn't mean predicts the future, but illustrates what God is doing.

For instance, I haven't blogged in a while because stuff has been going on.  I cycle through nonexpressive times.  but that doesn't mean all is well or bad.  Just nothing to process in this way.  So today an idea hits me and I sit down to write it.  Before doing it I read the last entry, which I had honestly forgotten about.  Wow!  what I intended to write is the further progression of what I was writing about then.  If there's any doubt that my life is guided by an intelligence other than myself, this is it.  I didn't even remember writing it, so I obviously didn't self-fulfill.

Anyway, I get tired sometimes.  Like brain spirit tired.  I just can't go on.  I want to curl up and sink into nothing.  I'm in one of those times now.  Ironically, it's in these times of not caring so much that I can reveal deeper truths about myself.  For instance the seething hatred for those who try to motivate and seminar Christianity.  I have friends who actually do recognize what Christianity should be, but they go about trying to implement it through motivational seminars, trainings, book jacket facebook posts, etc.  One went so far as to tell the reader to "man up" which meant sign up for the seminar.  Forgive me if you ever read this my friend.  It's not personal, I know you have a good heart and are working the best you know how.  But that just bends me the wrong way.  Since when does manhood, masculinity, toughness, denial of self, or whatever else the term "man up" could mean have anything to do with signing up for some stupid presentation!  That's what Jesus did, sure.  Walked around passing out flyers and getting people to go meet him on the hillside for "two hours that will change your life"..."are you man enough to show up?"  Howl and tear my clothes, man!

Who are these people trying to reach?  Unless there's a group of self-help junkie guys who are insecure in their own manhood, who else is going to get anything real out of that?! You certainly won't get the gay 20 year old who was abused by his father and keeps posting pics of big ol' **** on his facebook page!  Or the kid sitting in his closet slicing his arms with a pocket knife...yeah they just need to "man up"!

I'm just picking on this example because it was the steel striking my flint right now.  But there are countless others.  I've heard many pastors give a great sermon about using your talents, finding what God wants you to do, only to ruin it by ending with, "that means you need to stop by the sign-up table out in the lobby and fill out an interest card."  F***in' cereal box Christians!  I want to go turn the table over like Jesus in the temple.  And if a bleeped out word from a Christian blogger throws you off, what are you gonna do with the lady who sleeps with your pastor to get closer to God!

Ironically, I had someone come very seriously to ask me if I would lead a home group for her kids since she had seen how together my son was and she couldn't think of anyone she'd rather have teaching her kids.  I must be doing something right.  Wow would she be in for a shock.  How do you let someone like that down easy?  I just had to say I'd consider it and hope a convenient excuse comes up before she asks again.  What else was I to say?  Sure, I'll lead the group.  First thing I'll tell them is the best person to teach kids is THEIR PARENTS!  Then I'd tell them to read their own Bible and question everything anyone ever tells them about it.  I'll tell them to stand on their own, that they were strong and powerful and could take down cities if God told them to.  I'd tell them to get into fights if that's what it takes to defend the defenseless.  To give up everything including life itself to meet a need laid before them.  I could keep going.  She'd run for the hills!

If my kid is any indication of my parenting, I can tell you it's by the grace of God and not my own skill.  But, just recently two kids got off his bus in the neighborhood and one swung on the other.  A fight started.  He dropped his stuff and ran back to break them up.  Jumped right in the middle.  The next day a parent came and asked who had stepped in.  My son admitted to it.  Next thing the principal of the school called him in to give him accommodation and tell everyone they need more people like him.

Which brings me to my intended point.  We have become a nation of sheep, passively walking in line, not stepping on the grass, wearing our bike helmets and getting out of the water when thunder is heard.  All great safety tips, right?  Sure if you want to manage a huge populace...make them milquetoasts, make it seem morally honorable to follow the letter of the rules.  I even saw a PSA that said kids should wear life vests and water shoes even if walking near the water...just NEAR it!  How about toughing their feet by running barefoot and learning to walk carefully, swim well enough to save not just yourself, but someone else!

Climb the trees, walk in the grass, get dirty, and do something real.  How can we expect Christians to do amazing things when we train them to be model linewalkers!  That's what God wants...good little do-bees who sign the papers, and sing, but not too loudly, wave their arms, but not really let loose.

You are what you practice being.  Are you willing to get dirty?  Do you even know what that means?  Here's a paralell: you run in the gym, maybe on the paved trail...I'm sitting here covered in bits of leaves and spiderwebs stinging from splinters and scratches.  The difference between those two is a comparison of the distance between your seminar Christianity and the real needs.  You wouldn't know what to do with the people if they started showing up!  Do you know what the Wiccan Rede is?  Ever read the Koran?  Had coffee with the lady who runs a non profit to promote sex-worker rights against "those Christian organizations" who force them from "an ancient and esteemed traditional role into menial factory jobs"?

I'm tired of not speaking out about this.  You decide who you want to be.  If you want to break the norm, you have to break the norm.  That means taking some real risks.  If you're faithful in small you'll be faithful in much.

You know, you may not ever be equipped to deal with the kind of people I've described.  That's ok.  Young upwardly mobile preppy types give me shivers, myself.  But know for every type, there are people who can meet their needs.  Just get rid of your delusions that you have the answer for everyone and stop making it harder for those who are willing and capable to go where you can't.

Enough

OK.  Enough is enough.  Something has got to change.  Something in me.  Something in the world.  Something surrounding the world I see.

I don't have it figured out.  I don't know what it is.  I don't know how to start.  But God you won't let me stop thinking about it.

There is something missing.  It can't be filled by any made up group.  It crosses any category I place it in.  It scares me to death and yet it's totally necessary.

Take me out of myself.  I can't sort it out any more than Isaiah could describe what he saw, but You look at me with those piercing eyes and I scream, "Here I am, send me!"  Ruin my life, my self conception, my image of my self.  Only take me where I should go.

Kill what inhibits You in me.  For all my sins and flaws and insecurities, I still want to go. The metanoia is approaching.  When I have turned, fire me off in the direction I should go.

I have the skills to fill the void.  I will speak for them, give them a place and an identity.  Give me your eyes and burn up my pretense.  Help me to live true and open.  Help me to free the beast.  Send me to those who need me and bring alongside those I need, those you've prepared for this work.

There are lost ones all out there.  I have caught the scent of the ones I am to find.  I'm straining at the leash.  Let me loose and I will fly straight into the jaws of hell to bring them back.

Beast

This is likely going to be a dangerous post.  We'll see if it even gets published.  It might end up deleted.

Sometimes I feel an urge rise in me to tear things up.  To jump up and rip my way free from the invisible chains, the padded cell of office, house.  I know it probably wouldn't last long once the pain from that endeavor started to set in...it's harder to seriously break stuff than it seems.  But the urge is there.

I've never acted on it and my reasons quickly stills the beast and switches my attention elsewhere.  But sometimes I wonder what would happen.  How would life be different.

I've seen the beast flare to the surface on occasion.  When someone turned against the traffic light and I had to jump back from being hit, close enough to hit his window, which I slapped with all the force I could get in a split second reaction, and then he had the gall to stop and yell at me!  I was charging him down.  Even in business attire and with coworkers.  They pulled me away.

Another time someone punched through my apartment window.  When I ran out to see what happened I saw who I thought was a drunk boyfriend retaliating for our making his girlfriend pay for our car window which she had broken, I charged him down with true murder in my mind.  I was going to throw him off the balcony.  Fortunately there, my neighbor came out at the same moment and saw my intent.  He was closer and beat me to him.  He pulled his delirious and bleeding friend into a full nelson and positioned himself between me and him yelling that he was drunk and didn't mean to do it.  That quickly calmed and resolved as well.

But these were provoked reactions that I bet many men would have.  What I don't know about are the swells in the midst of other activities.  No doubt, my wildness trying to get out.  Pulling at the chain, shaking the bars.  Do others feel this?

I know I need wildness.  I need my time of pain and wearing down in the woods.  It is the physical expression of my spiritual discipline.  It keeps me sane.  But ow normal is this?  How do I give voice to it in healthy ways?  Will there be a time when it has a rightful place...my moment on Perelandra where I learn what this is truly for?  do all men feel it?  Is our mask of civility so thin?  Are we lying to ourselves and others when we pretend to not have these aspects?  Or do I contain a wild beast in the iron bars of my will and reason?

Behind

We often react to situations based on our emotion or perception.  Is it possible to step back and withhold reaction until we know more?  Can we take the time to step inside someone's head and see what motivates them?  Perhaps it would enlighten us greatly.  Perhaps we wouldn't be so quick to take offence or to come to our own defence.

Maybe we would see what makes another person take the shape and tone they do.  Maybe then we could regulate our reaction to be appropriate.  If we could see inside people we could perhaps bypass the outward and seemingly magically speak to the real issues.

Today I watched this happen.  I saw someone melt down over a very frustrating issue.  We had both been tense over these things beyond our control, but not with each other.  I had been reacting in my usual way...perhaps a little more loosely since I consider this person a friend.  But in this moment, the frustration turned on me.  I was not sure where it was coming from but I could see several things.  My friend's facial muscles were giving away the depth of his emotion as he tried to assert control over me.  I realized it as an attempt to grab control over something in a situation that had overwhelmed him.

I thought of reacting in defence, but forestalled it miraculously.  Instead we retreated to a private place and talked.  Apparently, he had been taking my verbal expression of frustration as personal attack.  This surprised me since it had never even crossed my mind that these things were his fault.  I had never even directed comments at him.  in fact they had all been calm and rational comments to the effect of, "I wish we had a different way to do this.  I hate being locked into a single path and dependent on ___ conditions."

So again, I could react with anger, point out his wrongs, or I could dissuade his frustration.  To my surprise I found myself doing the latter.  He calmed and we worked it out.  He even seeing that he had taken things too personally.

But then I began thinking of how he had arrived at that moment in the first place.  I tried to further understand his perspective, using the facts I knew.  Gradually a picture is forming.  I'm beginning to see how to communicate with him.  How to shape my flow to his in an edifying way.  To come alongside and build up as we move forward.

But this requires that I step outside myself and find the truth behind this facade.  In how many other ways can I do this?  What will be the effect?  Can I become as collected and cool as Card's Speaker for the Dead?  Knowing how to speak truth into any situation and gently manipulate myself for the betterment of the people I interact with?  To shape people and situations by reshaping myself?

I think this is possible.  In yielding there is strength.  In gentleness there is power.  It's not the same as slimy kowtowing or political manipulation.  It's a fresh wind, a folding brook.  It's the essence of the Spirit Lord.

Real Act

I just read an article citing statistical characteristics of kids who grow up in church and don't leave it when they get older.  This is a huge phenomenon, if you don't know.  Kids grow up going to church, doing good things, then leave either quietly or not so much, or fall into problems that most Christians think they should have been insulated against such as drugs, pregnancy, atheism, etc.

This article cited three main characteristics of those that stay. 1. they have had a conversion experience. Makes sense because those who simply grow up there can talk it and walk it, but it isn't necessarily a real thing for them.  So can they truly be called Christians in the first place?  As the Supertones said, "if you say you used to be a Christian, then you never were."

2. they are equipped to deal with life and not just entertained.  Again makes sense because most contemporary protestant churches and probably many of the nonprotestant bent focus so much on drawing them in that they lose all but the merest shred of content and become nothing more than "clean" social clubs. Which apparently aren't that clean either given the ways in which so many I've known have fallen out.  There's an infamous case (which could be rumor, though I don't doubt it could well be true) where a girl got pregnant in the church I grew up in while playing a youth group game...it resulted in a ban on any games that left us out of sight for more than like 5 minutes...which interestingly enough didn't stop any of those who fell out in my day from doing so...hmmm.

3. they are taught at home.  Again makes sense.  If a family is leaving their children's spiritual education up to professionals and volunteers who see them maybe 3 hours a week...c'mon.  But even still this is not fool-proof and I know several very stable families who did everything right to no avail.

This struck me.  I don't disagree with the article.  Makes sense, right?  But still doesn't seem to hit the nail on the head.  So how many will read that article and try to engineer these traits?  The thing is, I can point to many of my own friends who have had a so-called conversion experience who now reject the faith utterly, even those who came and left it far after their teens.  I know people with advanced religious education who have done the same.  These ought to be "equipped", yeah?  And as I pointed out, even the best families can't control everything.  I've seen the controlling ones who drive kids away and the more moderate who lose them still.

I don't know the answers here.  But I do know I am one of those kids who didn't leave, and I know why.  I did hit a wall in my faith as a teen.  I shouldn't say wall...it was more like a desert.  I had the so-called conversion.  I had the equipping and the family training in the form of hours of formal discipleship and biblical training as well as the fortunate gift of logical training and reason.  But it still all just seemed pointless.  As my questions deepened and broadened, the answers I was getting were mostly insufficient because people who were teaching me didn't understand or couldn't articulate themselves.  I naturally began to explore other things after my own peculiar flavor of poison.  But in my case, God pursued me.  He broke through my reality in seen and unseen ways.  He brought notable people who would speak powerful lasers of truth into me...sometimes just one statement at a critical time.  He sent me dreams...vivid visions.  And he allowed me to break myself so that I would be receptive when he stepped in for a greater revelation.

That was when real conversion happened.  Oh yes, it happened.  But it isn't something that can be engineered in a building with lights and music and retreats.  It is a deeply personal, tragic, painful sort of conversion in which I had nothing left and was given a new hope...a new life.  This is why I say like CS Lewis, I was drug in kicking and screaming.  In reality, I was more carried in after I had passed out and given up, but I was kicking and screaming up to that point in that I would accept nothing less than reality, Truth.

A few years after this, a mentor of mine posed this question that reveals for me how I felt prior and after.  He said, "If you came to a fork in the road and Truth went one way and Jesus went the other, which way would you go?"  My answer was a resounding "Truth".  But here's the trick of the question:  I've found that every time I perceive this dichotomy, it's because I have a false conception of...Jesus.  (I bet you thought I was going to say Truth.  If so, you need to stop drinking your evangelical koolaid.)  You see, every time I went toward what I saw as Truth and left Jesus behind, I'd find a clearer, brighter, realer Jesus standing right around the bend.  I couldn't get away from the guy!  And Thank God!  Because when I was utterly undone, he brought me back.

You see, it isn't a choice.  It isn't a point of decision...though I guess that exists somewhere or for some people.  It's an acceptance of what is.  A giving up to what I couldn't change.  The point of decision for me, has come multiple times after that as I am forced to decide whether my experiences are real or if I was/am psychotic.  But when I think about it, I can't choose otherwise.  There is nihilism, the nothing of no meaning, no caring, no feeling, emptiness of unrequited existence, or there is God who has revealed himself to me in the man Jesus.  Psychotic or not, I'm not going back in the pit...probably couldn't if I tried.  He'd just pull me back out again.

So, is Calvin right?  Am I just Elect and these kids, men, women are not?  I'm not building theology, here, just asking a legitimate question.  Or are they just not at the point yet?

Really, this question isn't what we should focus on.  Rather, what are we going to do about it.  If Calvinistic, we don't know who is elected and have a duty to relieve the suffering of all anyway.  If Evangelical, they're just not ready and no amount of coercing or engineering will change that.  So I suggest we start with one thing.  Be real.

Shed the pomp and hoohah.  Cut the bright lights and fancy marketing tactics. Get off the rockstar pedestals and deeply search.  Find out what's real.  I'll help you.  Come talk to me one on one, I promise I won't pull any punches.  You'll walk away questioning things you never thought you could.  Then, once we're gates of hell, standing in the burning pyre, flayed alive sure of what we believe, we simply act.  In the moment, in the real, act.  Feed, clothe, pray, comfort, support, help, encourage, love, bleed, cry, die in proportion to the faith we each have.

This is Jesus, by the book, man.

Jesus Prayer

It's been a long time since I've blogged.  This is because I've entered the busiest season for me.  This one was made more busy by a certain conglomeration of circumstances: family, work, illness  Not the least of which was surgery on myself.

But now I am back.  I'm still in the throes of activity, but find a spare moment.  Honestly, there's not much to tell, since I've been preoccupied there hasn't been much time for examination.  Perhaps this is a good thing.

Two things I have noticed.  One, I'm developing a fondness for Canada caused by a long spell of recovery in which I became fascinated with Canadian TV.  While this is silly, it's worth noting since I previously viewed it as pretty much a frozen wilderness with a fringe of basically American culture.  While obviously TV isn't a full or necessarily accurate picture, it is a window, and a careful observer (which I consider myself) can pick out elements that transcend the showbiz of even educational TV.  This is what has led to the fondness.

The second thing of note is the Jesus Prayer.  As usual, I won't quote it, go look it up (can't make it that easy; knowledge without even 30 seconds of effort is devoid of value.)  It's basically one line, packed full of meaning, said repeatedly as a means of focusing our attention.

I've tried various forms of discipline in the past. They work for a bit, and then the newness wears off and they become hollow.  Some people may find them more valuable, but for me they fade in favor of ever more real interaction.  But lately, this prayer has been good.  It has helped me stave off wandering thoughts, and quiet my mind.  This is a big problem for someone like me whose mind wanders leagues afield and at the pace of an overstimulated ferret.

But most notable is that while I was prepping for surgery in which they would essentially hollow out my face from the inside...not a pretty prospect...I kept saying this prayer.  It was easy enough to remember and pick right back up after an interruption.  As I was being put under, it was my last thought...I wonder if it might have even become audible as I was fading.  But then most astonishing to me was that it was my first thought upon regaining the slightest bit of consciousness.  Almost as if it had been rolling through my subconscious mind the entire time. 

Of course I can't say that to be the case as I was totally unaware of it.  But I was happy to find that my thoughts were not of monkeys wildly gesticulating behind the nurses or other such half-dreamed impressions.  Instead it was this one solid line of truth echoing through my reality.  Even when I could least control my mind, this razor sharp prayer cut through and remained strong.

Thank God, and thank all the saints who crowd around me whispering this line from across the centuries.

Speak

Today as I was reading George MacDonald, a scene leapt off the page and pierced me right through.  I could quote it, but it wouldn't possibly have the same effect as when it happened, so I won't bother.

Let me start at the beginning.  I'm reading At the Back of the North Wind.  From the very first, the description of the North Wind was remarkably like a sort of person I envisioned in a story I was writing once before.  It was not so much a story, but a vision that seemed to want telling.  Sort of like CS Lewis' image of Aslan that sparked the Narnia series.  Of course I didn't know about Aslan and Narnia at the time. 

Anyway, I tried to write a story about it, but the story wouldn't carry.  It was really just this impression of a person.  It's uncanny that more than a hundred years before, George MacDonald wrote a story about a character who looks nearly exactly as the one I saw.  But muses and all...

So today I read a scene where North Wind says something that I very nearly said verbatim last year.  Lest you think it's a common phrase that would naturally repeat, I'll tell you more.  In the book, North Wind is leading Diamond (the child) across the high ledges of a cathedral.  He's afraid he'll fall and she chastises him for not trusting her.  He tells her he's not trusting because he may falter.  And she replies that even if he fell and she lost her grip, she'd be after him such that she'd catch him before he hit the ground.  And last year as my Goddaughter was afraid of falling out of a boat, I assured her that if she began to fall out, I'd be in the water before she got wet.

But this is only the precursor.  A sign post that had me taking notice so I wouldn't miss what was coming.  In this same scene, the words then jumped out as Diamond and North Wind talked of previously being higher and unafraid, but now being afraid of falling into the deep empty church.  The lines were as if spoken to me.  I know what they mean and it is beyond the story.  This is exactly my apprehension of late.

But then North Wind leaves Diamond to make his way on his own, saying "Come after me".  He is afraid, but then she blows a gentle puff in his face and he draws strength and moves forward.  The blowing increases always gentle, but fortified with strength, and steadily infuses him as he moves.  Right here is where it pierced like an icicle of light right into my brain.  My eyes welled and overflowed.  God was speaking these familiar words directly to me in that moment.  I know the voice.  I know the reaction.  Call it crazy if you want, but it happened.  It's not the first time.

This can be confirmed because it is timely.  As I face trepidating circumstances, struggles with my place in the Kingdom, concerns over being alone, comes this necessary and direct comfort speaking to all of them perfectly and deeply.  I don't expect you to understand, and I don't seek your approval or acknowledgement.  Call me heretic even.  This was for me.  God speaks.  Not just through some systematized list of methods, not even through one collection of writings.  He speaks whenever and however He chooses, to whomever He chooses.  And His voice is unmistakable. 

I go no further than this.  But no less far.

I don't know where or how, but I am linked to George and Jack and Henry and Theresa and Francesco.  And I hear you God.  I am coming after you across the buttresses and ledges and spires.  I won't fear falling, nor the empty church below.  My place is in your wind, whipping full around me.  Help me never forget.

Tribal Christianity

If you read this blog, you'll know that I often refer to the natural grouping of humanity as the tribe.  This is not my idea.  It's documented.  Birds form flocks, wolves form packs, humans form tribes.

Like anything, tribal tendencies can be perverted and have been blamed for many of the conflicts in Africa.  So much so that many have called for conscious abandonment of tribalism.  As an aside, I think this is a mistake.  We can't deny what we were made to be.  The conflicts come because the tribal balance was artificially disrupted by the European colonization of these places which drew national lines right through ancient tribal holdings irrespective of their boundaries and told all the people to grow up and be Western.  But that's not my point.

My point is that Christianity is a restoration of things.  As such, it is inherently tribal.  The lifestyle of Jesus and the organization of the early church are very much tribal.  People are given an identity, which is permanent and personal.  They aren't members of...they ARE something.  Membership implies that you join and therefore can unjoin.  It's an affiliation that one chooses.  Tribal belonging is who you are.  You ARE this thing.  It is part of you and you are part of it.  It is less what it is without you, and you are not all you are without it.

It has an identity.  The tribe is about something.  People of that tribe look a certain way, live a certain way, and believe certain things about themselves and the world because they are of that tribe.  Yet the tribe is formed because the people share these things.  The identity is the lifestyle, and the reverse.  (Are you catching the organic bidirectional synergy here?)

They both have the same type of government.  Christianity is organized under leaders who both have a divine appointment, and are confirmed by the community.  This may not be your understanding from your version of Christianity, but research the descriptions of the early church in the Bible and you'll see.  "elders" (your translation may say "Bishops", but that term implies a meaning not in the original) are people God has given an ability to lead, usually experienced and older than the headstrong young.  But they aren't self-appointed.  The tribe selects and confirms them through their natural respect of these people.  Those who are elders will be and those who are not will not be.  No one campaigns for it.  See the synergy again?  A council of elders helps guide the group and everyone participates in the government of the group as they have ability.

Many tribes are run the same way.  Often even calling them elders!  You may have romanticized ideas of tribal kings and chiefs and such, but this is far less the fact than the council of guiders.  Plus in root tribal society, there are usually no laws as we know them.  People are guided by what is "right" and "wrongness" is rejected.  They don't need laws because they all know naturally.  In cases of dispute there are procedures to resolve it, or a split may occur.  Which leads to the next way Christianity is tribal.

Tribes are not always homogeneous.  Within tribes there are bands, within bands, families.  Tribes themselves may sit within nations of related or federated tribes.  Examples include the Iroquois, the Five Civilized Tribes, and the Sioux Nation...to name a few from the US (which I'm most familiar with).  Incidentally, the US governmental system of states and congress was largely patterned after the Iroquois who consulted at the Continental Congress, albeit Westernized with Greek and Roman ideas which the Iroquois were against.  Really...look it up.

So it is no surprise that there might be 41,000 versions of Christianity across the world.  One nation/faith with many tribes/denominations which are full of bands/local churches.  Each may vary in their customs, style, and coping strategies, but they are part of the one nation of God.

I could go on and on about how there is allowance in tribes for geographic and environmental adaptation just as Christianity has diverged and adapted to various cultures and situations, how typical roles in the tribe equate to spiritual gifts described in the Bible, how even the conflicts among Christian groups and other faiths mirror tribal conflicts.  But this is enough to chew on for now.

I encourage you to look it up.  Research the organization of ancient Israel, American tribes, and other tribal societies.  Also check the organization of the early church.  Read the Biblical sources, check the Greek, look at extra-Biblical writings from the same period as the Bible, compare anthropological evidence. Use credible sources and get a diversity of opinions.  I bet you'll come to the same conclusion.

And that makes perfect sense if Christianity is a restoration of the way things were intended to be.  The closer people live to how things were originally intended, the more they should look similar, right?

The next question is of course, what should this understanding mean to us?  But I'll save that for later.

41,000

There are an estimated 41,000 Christian denominations.  This varies depending on how you count, but lower numbers are around 33,000.  Wow.  That's a lot.  And I'm sure this doesn't pick up many 'flavors'  and styles within denominations.

The fact that there are so many doesn't really concern me.  Humans are a persnickity people who love to lump and split and join and faction.  Especially with things so dear to our hearts, like sports teams, and colleges, and fashion styles, landscaping, music, and religion.  I believe this to be a natural, though often perverted and at times over active tendency based in our genetic tribalism.  I've said it before; wolves have packs, birds have flocks, humans have tribes.  Best to simply accept it and move on.

But anyway, the thing that concerns me is what happens amongst Christians...they tend to assume people are on their side.  I can't tell you how many times I've talked to someone who finds out I'm a Christian who then assumes I believe so many things that they associate with it.  When statistically, I'm far less likely to believe what they do.  Of course it would be more prudent to discover a little more about my beliefs before getting into controversial topics, or simply avoid them altogether, but prudence is not a popular quality, nor is logic taught widely enough to achieve the same effect simply from efficiency.

So why do so many people automatically assume I am of their particular bent in what is truthfully quite a diverse pool?  Some of it is probably that people don't really encounter that many of the denominations in their lives.  Many are very small and regionalized, so it's a much smaller set of groups people encounter.  But even if there were only five major groups (I believe most people encounter far more than that) the beliefs could be different enough to teach us we may not be talking to someone who believes like we do.

So then there's training.  Most people really only know one or two in any depth.  Even if they've encountered others.  And if we know more, we're usually taught they are wrong.  This isn't usually the actual teaching, nor the reason the denominations split.  As CS Lewis said, those at the center of the wheel are much closer together than those at the end of the spokes.  If you research it, you'll find it is usually a very minor point of order or belief that caused the split.  Then culture and human nature did the rest.

But to return to the point, people may assume I believe like them, because I wouldn't be where they are, and friendly, if I didn't.  Or else, I've just confessed I do (in their mind) by the use of the term Christian, which they take to mean their version of it (which could be the only version they know).

Then some of it may be due to the fact that we don't talk about it in America.  I truthfully talked more publicly about my faith, and to a much more receptive audience, I might add, in Japan.  Coming from a pluralistic background, and in the safety of their decidedly non-Christian culture, my beliefs were no threat to them.  I was in no danger of wrecking their country with my weird ways.  So they could be genuinely curious and respectful.  I don't know about other countries, but I imagine other cultures range up and down the spectrum of tolerance from my two experiences.

Anyway, we don't talk about religion much in America, so it's almost a cagey thing to even bring up...even in a church.  We aren't used to explaining our beliefs or talking openly about them.  So when someone finds a 'clue' that I might share their beliefs, they drop guard and assume without thinking about the reality.

To branch out a bit, I'm convinced that many people abandon the term Christian altogether for more or less the same reasons.  Some don't want to be associated with the notion they have in their head of one denomination or experience when really their beliefs are very close to many other types of Christianity.  Some don't want others to think they're "one of those people" because of the negative connotation they bring to it.

So doesn't one of these denominations have to be right? How can I be so loose about it?  Well, sure, Truth, by definition can't be pluralistic.  But we're talking about human systems here.  At the root of Christianity there are some basic tenets that most groups will align on.  For one, they all center on the man Jesus.  They may differ on exactly who he was or what he did, but those distinctions are for the individual to root out.  We also all pretty much follow the same moral code...which incidentally we share with every other major world religion because (here's a secret), it wasn't created by Jesus.  It's innate to all humans.  The Bible even talks about this.  The rest is mostly just style, culture, and opinion.

Of course, ruling out all the distinctions for a watery ecumenical faith is not good either.  I'm simply suggesting we, first of all, know what we believe and recognize it as part of a wondrous diversity.  The God who could generate such a world of lifeforms could certainly reflect some diversity in music style and opinion.  Secondly, don't be afraid to explain your beliefs...which is tied to my third point: don't assume others believe the same way.  Go ahead and investigate and decide what's right for yourself.  Then stick to it.  But just because I go to certain place or say a certain thing, doesn't mean I'm also number 31,234...I could just as well be 31,235, or even 14,657!  And my version may just have an answer for the burning problem you want to talk about.

Heat

I have a passion, a fire.  My temperament is this way.  I control it well and don't lose my temper often, but I am excitable and quickly heat up about things, good and bad.  I have a hard time letting an injustice go unaddressed.

I have in the past been quite angry...not in the uncontrolled anger management sense, but in the seething beneath the surface, fiery oratory sort of sense.  I have been called a match: quick to fire up at the least abrasion, but short lived and relatively harmless.  I would quickly pop off on people.  Tell them what I thought.  Call them out.  Politely, but directly.  In nicer times, I could frame it as a joke and lay some low with pointed humor that accomplished the same thing as the angry version, but with less direct confrontation.  It has served me well and I took it as a gift.

Of course any gift can be perverted, and so I took my tendency to pop off or become quickly agitated.  I even thought this heat inside was to be used to call crusade for good.  To call out injustice and wrongness.  I wouldn't stand for it and everyone needed to know that they couldn't get away with that junk around me because I'd call it right out in front of everyone.

But lately, I've begun to wonder if this is not such a gift.  I'm not sure.  Really.  I have just begun to see that maybe there is virtue in quietly handling the wrongs, perhaps even letting people go their own way.  Perhaps not always...there may well be a time to stand up and call it out.  But maybe there is a time for noticing without mentioning.

Previously I viewed this as tolerating what shouldn't be tolerated.  As a disservice to the one I refrained from speaking to.  After all, Truth must shine forth, and we have a duty and calling to hack away at the darkness.

Don't get me wrong, I've never attacked people like many legalists do.  My crusades are about grace and forgiveness.  But fuelled with a blazing angry passion.

The thing is, it's really hard to win.  I took this as confirmation that the world was corrupt.  As in the Mission, I was DeNiro's reformed conquistador, ready to shed blood, even my own in defense of what was right.  I'd rather stand up and take a blow to the face for speaking out than sit by and let a wrong go.  It was not my job to win...just to fight.

But now, I'm seeing a lovely grace, an almost asian-master sort of goodness, in letting things flow.  Perhaps speaking boldly out is not always the way to go.  Perhaps there is collateral damage that could be spared.  Perhaps there is something to a more pacific attitude.  Perhaps this is not over-tolerance, a moopy spine.  Certainly it could be, just as my passion could be perverted to plain anger and hate.  But maybe this is a time for me to learn how to be meek in the truest sense.

Jesus did speak boldly.  He did enrage and agitate and even physically overturn.  But he also nurtured and helped and loved in a soft and tender way.

Perhaps the Greystokian animalistic nobility, the chivalric gentle warrior, is not God's ideal.  Perhaps it is far less inspiring.  Far more suffering (in the old sense).  Far more humble (in the old sense of lowly).

Please teach me the answer, Jesus.  What am I to learn from you in this yoke?  Help me to be pliable and open to you.  I fear I will lose my strength, my identity, and I don't know how else to be.  But I must lose mine to gain yours and I will be what you make me.

Holiness

It's been a while since I've posted anything.  After my last upheaval, which is not yet resolved by the way, there has been a lull.  A peace.  Not that I've been perfectly content or that things have stopped forming in me, but that I have been resting somewhat.  My mind has been given a break.  And since this blog is really a way for me to process my own journey, there hasn't been much to tell.

But one thing that has marked this time has been a desire for holiness.  A set-apart-ness.  This folds in righteousness, goodness, and all other virtues.  But mostly it has been a soft glowing desire for true holiness.  Like an old fire embering and pushing out the best kind of heat and a soft pulsing glow.  And it is old in me, ready to consume new dross and to blaze in the world on good fuel.  But not right now. 

Now is a stoking I think.  Long-tolerated sins are becoming known to me.  Strong sinewy flaws deep in my being are exposed.  I am examining the flex and stretch of the fibers; how they move and where they connect.

I am returning to basic disciplines, which are so easily overstepped, remembering old lessons and heroes, mentors, models.  This is more than a little fuelled by the election of a new pope...a Jesuit who chose the name Francis...the first, no less.  The first from the New World...the far west.  A man of the people who is admirably humble.

While I am not Catholic for several reasons, I have great respect for them as the preservers of our Christian history.  The ones to whom it has been entrusted.  The root institution from which all our other reformed, protestant, revertist, evangelical, charismatic, and every other type are intimately tied.  While the branches and changes have often been necessary and the Catholic church has been guilty of gross errors and injustices, are we not all guilty and all forgiven?  I personally can't disrespect them simply because my teachers and mentors have many been of or close to this denomination and this denomination has preserved their teaching so that I can learn from them even though centuries stand between us.

In that, I have respected Jesuits for their practicality and justice.  For their mission to the world's end even in deadly and unknown times and places.  And for their prayer through action.  At one time I considered becoming as closely aligned with them as I could as a non Catholic.

Then there is Francis.  One of my teachers and a heart which I greatly identify with and aspire to.  He has inspired me so much so that many life decisions were the direct result of following his ways applied in my life.

And this pope embodies them both.  And to top it all, a thing I will never forget, him humbly bowing before the world and asking for prayer.  This cemented in my mind that this is who I want to be.  Let all else fall off if my life can exude this humilty.

God, may it mark a permanent change in me.  Away with the course, brash, dirty, mean parts of me.  Let the peace and gentleness you instill in my deepest heart radiate through my mind, body, mouth, and into my life.

Horse

"But a false sense of power, a sense which had no root and was merely vibrated into me from the strength of the horse, had, alas, rendered me too stupid to listen to anything he said."

The quote above is from Lilith, by George MacDonald.  In this scene, Mr. Vane has been defeated and tricked by Lilith, and Mr. Raven is taking him to his house from which he fled in the first place.  Mr. Raven summons his horse, which is dark and spectral yet powerful beyond knowing to ease the journey of the weary Vane to his house where he must sleep.  Vane and the horse instantly bond and once on his back, Mr. Vane decides to leave Mr. Raven against his advice.  Raven cautions it will be to ruin again.  And then this quote.

The book in general is already one of my favorites ever and I haven't even finished it yet.  It has been speaking to me in so many ways.  But this line struck me today.

In this blog, I have recorded mere months ago the sense of triumph and power that I had been feeling.  While I had known it was from God, and not of myself, I, like Vane, couldn't help feeling as if it was mine.  When in fact it was only borrowed...no, not even that much possession.   The power was no more mine than is the strength and stamina of a powerful horse on which a man happens to sit.

Even then, in my deep heart I knew it would not last.  But how my vanity has cost me.  What damage I may have wrought in myself, my family, and those I love.  Feeling emboldened like never before I took actions and harboured feelings of authority that were not mine.

To the casual reader, this will seem different than it is.  I don't mean that I did any overtly egregious thing.  In fact, like Mr. Vane, my intentions were all honorable and above board.  I would fix what was wrong where my influence fell and would use this power to do so.  I didn't even "fall from grace" in the sense that we use it for leaders who make a public mistake.  No, it is far subtler.  Far more difficult to see, and therefore all the more damaging.  Like the loose screw in the engine that is so easily overlooked and yet once failed, will bring down the entire machine.

And yet in this realization, I am not even crushed.  Repentant, yes, falling on the grace which saved me, and intent to be better and to learn, but resting in the knowledge that it is ok.  My failing has not one bit thwarted the will and plans of my God.  He will right all wrongs and preserve His children from undue harm.

Perhaps I am also McDonald's stupid philanthropist who would use the grace given me to spare those within my influence from the very thing most needful: that which would be the vehicle of their healing.

All traces of my vanity must die.

Shadows

I am in the shadows.  I walked out into the light recently and it was good for a time, but higher heights bring deeper depths.  I don't feel to have changed, nor that I did anything wrong, but circumstances have once again confirmed for me that my place is the shadows.  I must be terrifying.

I don't mean this in the horror sense.  But that I am probably too raw, too intense, too literal.  Most people aren't able to cope with it.  Is it a holiness reflected through me or my own depravity that shows?  Maybe it's both.  A sort of terrible holiness amidst a dead thing...a thing which knows full well the depths from which it existed.  A Frankenstein's monster of life and death rolled together in one.

I don't want to veil it.  I've lived that way too long.  But it hurts to constantly see the same reactions.  To have truth taken for lies.  Do I speak the same language as others?  Do I see too deeply into them?  I can't see this myself.  Am I that delusional that I could be so aversive and not see it?  Or am I hyper sensitive, finding deeper meaning in what is really nothing?

I don't know.  I can't tell.  So in these times, recount the facts.  I desire to do good.  I believe in a living relational God who is active in human life.  I take fairly literally the promises and exhortations in the Bible, taken with a sound logic and historical context...I'm not dancing with rattle snakes here.  I will and do act for good in practical ways.  I do not value my life, future, possessions too highly.  I am often misunderstood.  I don't have many friends and find it hard to keep them.  I am often lonely.  I want to belong.  I want a few people who understand me or at least do not reject me no matter what.  I want to see grace in human action, even for me.

But I don't honestly believe I'll find it.  I think my lot is that of David, Elijah, John the Baptist, Henry Suso.  To dwell apart, sometimes respected, sometimes valued, but never held too closely, always a little feared...always in the shadows.

Wow, this sounds whiny.  God forgive me.