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.