Through the Roof

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Run

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reckless and Painful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Woof

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

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

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

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

Rough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank God for all he is.

Kick

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

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

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

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

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

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

Counterproductive

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

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

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

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

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

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