IIIII

I see you coming to life,
In strange ways,
Inverted,
Ilks outward as if you don't mind,
Inwardly pining for what's already yours.

touching Heaven

Last night, I was minding my own business at a Starbucks in Lakeland (Lake Miriam) when I was approached by a homeless man who just began to talk to me. He said that he hoped I didn't mind if he spoke with me, that he was lonely and sometimes just needed to talk to someone. So I asked him to sit with down with me at my table and I began to listen to his story . . . a pitifully tragic story of repeated failure and defeat, of loneliness and dejection. From the heavy smell of alcohol emanating from his breath (along with all sorts of other scents), I could deduce that he had tried to numb the lifetime of pain that he had endured and was taking nearly two hours to tell me about. More than once he stopped and wept . . . a pathetic man in a pathetic condition. In fact, if this man had lived in first-century Palestine, he would be called cursed and not only avoided by choice but it would be a legal mandate to stay abreadth of his uncleanness. The poor and destitute were counted as nothing and had no place in society. So it is no difficult thing to understand that Jesus (who might very well have been a student of the great Pharisee Hillel) faced certain shame and ostracization for ministering to (touching) the shameful and ostracized ones in Galilee. He even proclaimed the cultural blasphemy that these unclean wretches were the greatest of the blessed membes of the Kingdom of Heaven. Obviously he wasn't speaking literally . . . these people would never enter into any real palatial inheritance. He was making an important societal metaphor concerning priority: how can a nation stand before its God or even stand at all if it forgets and even curses its less fortunate and destitute?So I put forth the same question in our context: How can we stand before God or even exist as a community of faith if we don't take the time to touch and declare blessed the cursed of our community?

Inadequate

As of late, I have felt very inadequate. It goes like this: As I venture further into my passion for biblical history and scholarship, I realize how much I don't know and how much so many people in the field do know. Simultaneously, I am feeling more and more disconnected from the call to ordained ministry. Don't get me wrong, I still feel a deep desire to minister to people and help them, but my emotional connection to the ministry itself is waning. . .quickly. Therefore, inadequacy sums it up. And I'm not going to attach some cheesy/tired platitude about God being adequate or sufficient when I'm not. It's true, I'm sure. . .but truthfully, at the moment, I don't feel it.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls

I often wonder how God thinks and feels. Is He one to experience human emotion, or are our anthropopathisms a mere grasp at the unnamed and immeasurable emotions of the One? What can be said of a being or force that at once feels and acts for, towards, and because of a countless quantity of life-forms in Its own universe or creation? Obviously, we could never fully comprehend what He perceives or how He gauges existence (I use "He" because it is traditional). But I am confident that at times, He and I are one in thought or feeling. For a moment, His sympathy transcends His own transcendence, and we are one in the immanence of Suchness; and through that, I am able to, if but for a fleeting moment, know a bit of the "more than Presence" that I claim to serve. And of course, if I were to give more of myself, I might encounter more of these bittersweet jots of "it all". I imagine, then, that knowing or "having relationship with" God has very little to do with acquiescing to a system of soteriological dogma or practice (in other words, it's not about believing certain things to be factually true or behaving a certain way). This relationship is absolutely defined by acknowledging the Eternal, and consciously interacting with Him whose throne is in Heaven. We can learn the way of that celestial home, and with the Spirit, make it a reality here for the generations that come after us. That is the only Heaven we will ever know. . .

I am feeling. . .

SUBVERSIVE!


non-violent

impassioned



yes, that's the rub. . .

Can You Feel It?

They say change is coming.

I think they're correct.

But what can humanity accomplish that is truly new?

Can we make something authentically original?

"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
'Look! This is something new'?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow."
-Ecclesiastes 1.9-11

The Spirit creates ex-nihilo.

The Spirit is doing-saying-making something(or all things) NEW.

"In the last days
the mountain of the LORD's temple will be established
as chief among the mountains;
it will be raised above the hills,
and peoples will stream to it.
Many nations will come and say,
'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.'
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He will judge between many peoples
and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Every man will sit under his own vine
and under his own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the LORD Almighty has spoken."
-Micah 4:1-4

A Grief Neglected

"What is mourning, and how do we mourn? Is mourning the reverse side of love, and is its pain the mirror-writing of Love's delight? The greater the love, the deeper the grief; the more unreserved the surrender, the more inconsolable the loss. Those who have given themselves utterly in love for someone else die themselves in the pains of grief, and are born again so that life can be given to them afresh, and so that they can again find the will to live."

-Jurgen Moltmann

I am struck by the phenomenon of human grief. When we lose somebody dear to us, and the mourning process commences in us, it seems as if life has halted for a time: consistent deep sadness, loss of interest in the world around us, insurmountable depression, inhibition of activity, etc. The fact that this is a natural occurrence is in remarkable contrast to the usual resilience of the human species. Behaviors emerge in us that would be cause for clinical diagnosis were they not solely present during a period of mourning. This is generally accepted; and in a strange but hardly morbid way, it is rather beautiful.

What is grotesquely morbid, however, is our modern era's narcissistic suppression of the mourning process. Sure, individuals are often left alone to their emotional grief when they desire to be without company, but consolation and solidarity as practiced by a caring community is snubbed as antiquated or out-dated. Sadly, many are also fearful of the mourning environment. . . that somehow they might contract the negative feelings in that atmosphere like one would a bacterial infection. But that is precisely the purpose of such involvement, to adopt the feelings of the grieved individual or groups and aid in the healing that must occur.

I commend those in the Christian Church who still feel that it is the Body of Christ's responsibility to be the healing balm for the wounded spirit in their community. We are the parakletos, commissioned by the Spirit to participate in the divine solidarity with those who suffer and mourn. They need us and count on us to be the sacred agents of life and love and empathy. How dare we abandon them?

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."