I stoled this from Morgan's blog.

Please, go wash.

Tonight when I was driving back from Waylon's I was stopped by a red light. Being the good driver I am, I waited for the red light to turn green by looking at the stoplights on my left and right to see if they were turning yellow and then red themselves. As I was looking to my right I noticed a women who was pulled up over the white line and who was rubbing her eyes.

So, naturally I pulled up just a little and I noticed her cheeks were wet. We both drove on, through three more lights and every stop she pulled up past the white line and rubbed the tears away.

Who knows what she was crying about. Maybe a lost life, maybe a lost marriage, maybe a lost child, maybe a lost job.

A broken promise?

That is what I cry over in the car. I cry over broken promises. Whether they be promises I actually made or were actually made to me, or whether they were unspoken promises. Promises that were just expected to be met.

This world is full of broken promises. It takes a million men to find an honest one. Someone who will keep their promise in the deepest, darkest situations.

Maybe the broken promises pull us into the clean spring of the kept promise. But, we need to know how to swim in the spring to even understand the promise of life kept in it. If we don't understand the promise of life, we will surely drown because of the dirt and mud of those broken promises that pull us down the the bottom.

We will drown because of the broken promises. We will drown ourselves with our own tears from our broken hearts.

But someone has drowned for us. Someone has taken all of the broken promises that are suffocating us and has been dragged down to the the bottom of the earth. Someone has drowned in the tears and the pain of humanity.

Through this someones drowning we have the life of the spring. We know longer have to swim to survive our broken promises, but are allowed to enjoy in the spring through it's living water. It's not deep enough to swim in. It is just deep enough to wash in.

If we do not go wash in the spring of life we will still be suffocated with the broken promises of this earth. The mud will dry, caked into our lungs, if we do not run to the spring and wash.

Please, go wash.

Stop.

My heartbeat has slowed, it hasn't stopped completely, but there are moments in my life where I can feel my lungs grasping for air. I first thought the reason I felt my heart in my throat was because my heart was beating rapidly and I just now realized that my heart seems to be slowing down. It doesn't want to fight the battle of trying to survive this life anymore. My heartbeat is becoming the reflection of the death that the rest of my existence is slowly feeling.

Stop.

That's what I long for. I would like to stop in this moment, in many moments and capture these passing memories that seem to create my understanding of life. I don't just want to stop and smell the roses I want to stop and touch them, and see them, and hear the breeze blowing through the trees.

Stop.

I would like to stop living the facade of life.

I would like to sit, watch, listen, smell and know that I am not just a creature that has been woven together by random scramble. What a futile life that is! To just be nothing more than a passerby. To be nothing more than the passing breeze along a shore front. To just be a leaf that falls off a tree and dies without any regard of the tree itself.

What a silly existence! What an offending state!

So many of the same words trying to prove every movement in our being and all these words do is land us into nothing.

The common thread of our life, the final pull of that thread is death itself. We all die. What are the details of life, what are the facts, if we all die?

Stop.

Stop wanting, trying, breathing, living, dying, knowing, fighting.

Stop.

Stop finding, loosing, keeping, shitting, fleeing, sitting, standing, lying, laying.

Stop.

Stop and see, listen, hear, smell and know.

Know that you are more than random. Know that you are more than nothing.

Because if you are not more than that, you are dead.

Kelly wrote it.

Element v. elements [Chicago Dawn]

Pad down grey through fragile clear
an elemental strong
A step, a day, a month, one year,
through rectangle hills

The sky does lift, his gentle grasp
soft around her waist
Chin up, pink nose, she breathes a sigh
Dark lashes beat the haste

The fire leaves drink up cool breeze
They shudder, move in tight
Eternal boats, the seven seas
Fresh dewdrops melt the night

Grid blocks to spaghetti streets
Cement becomes the air
The light before, the dark behind
Caught in a blessed snare

She grasps a bar and lets it go
(i.e. her awe turns into laughter)
A dance with Elemental Flow
There's nothing else for her to know
There's nothing else for her to know

"That will be my love letter to you."

The title of this blog is something that Waylon often says to me in conversation. We try to have the 'what are your needs' or 'how can I love you better' conversations every so often. We understand that this world is full of detrimental relationships and we know that if we do not consistently work on our relationship than we will become one of those detrimental relationships.




In many of these kinds of conversations Waylon communicates that the actions that he tries to communicate to me are a love letter to me. He doesn't have to write down flowery and beautiful things to me because he shows his love letter to me in the life that we are striving to live together. I think this statement is actually borne out of the understanding that we often here our mentor and advisor state that the Bible is a love letter to us, as the people of the world. While this love letter has been written to us it also is lived out among us through this community called the church.





Well I heard a part of this love letter in a new way while sitting in one of my Old Testament classes this morning. We are going through the prophets and trying to understand the purpose and the significance of these men and women in world of the Israelites and in our world as well. We were discussing Hosea today. If you don't know much about Hosea here is a short summary of what the book is about. God calls Hosea to marry a women who is a prostitute. So, Hosea being the presence of God in Israel marries Gomer and has a child with her. But, the story doesn't end there. We soon find out that Gomer is still active in her life of prostitution and has two children with men that are not Hosea. Gomer returns to her old life and leaves Hosea in the dust.

She commits a sin against love. My prof stated that he considers this sin against love is the most detrimental sin, it is the sin that causes the most pain.

Now if we were to look at this story in our modern or even our postmodern lens we would probably conclude that Hosea has every right to leave Gomer. I mean c'mon, she cheated on him and then returned to her old life and left him in a bad way. It seems that the pain in Hosea is too much and it would make sense if he were to leave her to nurse his wounds and to rid himself of her unfaithfulness.





But, there is a sudden twist in the story and God tells Hosea to buy his bride back. God asks Hosea to experience a different kind of love. A pained love. A love of choice. The reason God asks Hosea to buy Gomer back is because He is trying to display his pain to his adulteress's wife. See God made a covenant with Israel and Israel was cheating on God with other gods. God wants to show the Israelites through the prophet of Hosea that His love is greater than pain.





So, Hosea goes and buys his bride back. He spends a fourth of a years salary plus some on buying her back, because even God knows that love is priceless. It does not matter the price of love it is always worth paying for.





Then my professor asks the question that surprisingly bothered me. He asked do you think Hosea and his Gomer worked out in the end? Did they have a happy ending? Most of the people in my class said that it probably wouldn't work out, that she would probably go back to her old ways, to her old habits.





Surprisingly I was bothered by this, and maybe it's because I really relate to Gomer, I really relate to Israel. I obviously am not a prostitute, not in the physical sense anyway, but I definitely sell myself for little to nothing. My attention, my needs, my wants are bought at a very cheap price. I long for self gratification, and so I relate to Gomer because I understand what it means to prostitute my soul, my emotions, my love, my mind to simple and lustrous fulfillment's. I commit the most painful sin of all by selling myself for cheap gratification and cheap value.





Yet, I have been loved purely by Christ and that is where I long to find my fulfillment. I so long to be loved with pure intentions and with a long lasting commitment. I long to be loved in a way that isn't focused on self gratification. I long to be loved through my pain and through my sin.





And I find this kind of love in different places within the church. I find it hugely in Waylon. I find it hugely among my peers and among my co-workers, but I find it the most in the love letter that I have received from God, himself. He seems to use the different people in my love to demonstrate his lasting, patient, committed love to me.





So, maybe Gomer did stay with Hosea. Maybe Hosea was that pure love that she longed for. Maybe Gomer continued to be distracted by her shallow means of self gratification, but maybe she understood that she actually wanted a commitment, that she could count on. Maybe she longed for a love letter that was written in words but that was actually lived out over time.

Bad or Empty?

I tend to do things that are bad but I tend to feel no guilt for them. This could be a result in my desensitized mind and soul or it could also be the result of my disposition to do bad things.

Let's face it many of us break the speed limit, we are dishonest, we covet, we expose ourselves to raw human filth through media, we are prideful, we are jealous, we often spit fire when we are angry. Now I am sure there are some of you reading this that would never own up to any of these things, so maybe you should stop reading now.

But, for those who do things like this and who don't feel much guilt in doing these things I think I have discovered a reality that I had not before understood.

In the Christian circle these "bad" things we do would be considered sin. They are selfish and make our world about protecting ourselves from everyone and everything around us. They are fulfillment's to the desire of becoming greater than we actually are. These "bad" things are actions we are supposed to stay away from.

If we want to be a "good" Christian you can't do "bad" things.

Now I am all for morality. From a philosophical point of view one must have morality so that one can function in a healthy society. So what makes my morality as a Christian different than from a person who does not have faith, or does not have faith in the same God that I worship? Why is my morality better?

Many would say our morality is better because it comes from Jesus. But even the Islamic religion views Jesus as an extremely moral teacher. Someone that they could learn much from.

Here's what I think. I myself am moving away from the moral theology that I have understood all of my life, and I am moving towards a light and dark theology. It seems that this kind of theology does not hold up in court. While I still retain my morality and I still find it valuable in looking at the person of Jesus I have come to the realization that it is meaningless on it's own.

I have written about my light and dark theology in the past on this blog but another way of putting it is being led by love. I recently heard a sermon that put into words what I feel about moral Christianity. Instead of being led by what is right and what is wrong, we must be led by love.

To describe this new theology that I have come to understand must be written over many posts, so the first post I would like to write is the post about how sin is viewed in this kind of theology.

Like I said morality has it's piece to play in this theology and often times your moral actions are the best indicator of what is going on in the heart. However, the view that sin is bad needs to be changed.

Because bad is not the right description for what sin actually is.

Sin is empty. Not like in a, 'my cup is empty and I want God's love to fill it up', more like an emptiness that is meaningless and dull and devoid of vitality. At least those are some definitions that come with the word empty. It's like having a draught on the land for five years. There is lack of everything.

This emptiness is full of sorrow for those who know the Good News because when you are filled with the love of Christ it is understood that when you see someone who is empty it is heartbreaking. The difference between a sinful life and a Christ life is that one is empty and the other if full.

See Christians are supposed actually believe the Good News they proclaim. I think one of the reasons the people in the world don't trust the church is because the church doesn't believe it's own Good News. Maybe that's one of the reasons why people scoff at us and call us hypocrites. It's not about doing the good thing morally anymore. It's about actually proclaiming the Good News.

Maybe it's more about the love that we feel and understand from our own walks that should define how we view the people around us. Maybe we should stop viewing people as black and white and start viewing them from a Love theology.

Seem.

I was in Lincoln today and I was riding in the car with a friend. We were riding right past the gas station when we saw about five young black men coming out of the gas station together. This is what happened;

"What's with all the gang activity in Lincoln this summer?" -friend

"I don't know this is the first time I have seen anything like that? I just think it's interesting that when we see a group of black men all together we think it's a gang."=me

"Well it's not that they are black it's their clothes that gives it away."=friend

"Yea I did hear about a couple of car break-ins this summer."=me

"Yea, except they caught the people who were doing that and they were both white guys."=friend

This short exchange gave me a realization that sometimes people seem differently than they actually are. This is not only with a slight judgement on the streets but it seems to be infesting my own life.

I seem to be failing at most things and the thing that I seem to be good at seems to be farther away than I would like to admit.

This idea of seem really frustrates me.

Almost to the point of wanting to give up. I just feel like if I determine my life by the way I seem to think it is I set myself up for failure.

Simply because I know that this mind set of seem has been developed by the many ventriloquists that have attempted to pull the strings in the life I live.

Here's my deal.

I am tired. I am tired of trying to explain myself, because I don't seem to get anywhere. I am tired of being vulnerable because the people I choose to be vulnerable with don't seem to care. I am tired of getting up and doing the same thing I did the day before because my existence seems futile at times. I am tired of trying so damn hard to love the people in my life because it seems that nothing ever changes. I am tired of my resilience because it seems to get me into a mess every so often.

I am tired of going to bed every night because it seems that some things happen in the dark that make me weary.

But, here's the clincher.

All these realities, ideas, things, whatever you like to call them are not who I am but rather how other people have seen me which in case lends itself to how I seem to have to live my life.

I have to live my life according to what seems.

However, if I were to take my old way of thinking and throw it on the oven burner of actuality I will soon find out that my seems are much more over exaggerated than I thought they were. That people don't really seem to think of me in any specific way or being and that I can go on with my life without needing to prove anything to anyone.

So, my struggle...is being frustrated with the way things have been while transitioning into the things that are and that are yet to be. I know original using the word things.

I am tired. Not because I am seemingly trying to accomplish anything.

I am just tired and I wonder if other people ever feel this way? If everyone ever so often is weary?

I apologize for my rambling because I am doing this without much thinking. Sorry if this seems a little harsh.

Homeless

So, recently I have become homeless.

Actually, come to think of it I guess I have always been quite homeless. Not in the typical sense in which I don't have a place to stay, but in the way where I guess I have always gone by, "Your home is where your heart is," and it seems that ever since I was able to see things in this world I have always given my heart away. So, since my home is where my heart is I seem to find myself quite homeless.

My heart is in Canada,

My heart is in Mexico,

My heart is in San Diego,

My heart is in Lincoln,

My heart is in Naperville,

My heart is in Montgomery,

My heart is in England,

My heart is in Assumption.

There are so many places where I have seen God and so it's hard to have one place to put my heart and so there in essence is why I remain homeless.

Everyone Wins...or at least everyone feels like they did.

I was swimming in the pool with Waylon and his niece Mckayla and she is just learning how to swim with her arms and her legs. When Mckayla would swim a certain amount of distance she would yell "I win a thousand metals!" and Waylon would yell in response, "Mckayla wins the gold medal!"

Then we tried to teach her how to count to five. Waylon and I figured that Mckayla didn't feel like learning because she would always forget what would come after two.

The reality of the situation is that Mckayla is going to be turning five in a week or so and she doesn't know her numbers or her letters. This is a contention between the men and women in Mckayla's life. The men think that she shouldn't have to learn anything until she actually goes to school, while the women think the opposite.

It's an interesting debate. And I finally came to a realization in the pool today. Being a different kind of learner I understand the conflict of understanding the different kinds of learning styles and I also understand that the public educational system really focuses on one style.

But, that is not what I am concerned about right now. What I am concerned with is the way that people in the public educational system are so concerned with making sure every child knows that they are special and knows that they are winners.

Perfect example: If you are watching the disney channel you don't have to wait long to see a movie or a show about a little league team who loses but they still feel warm and fuzzy because someone comes along and tells them, "Your winners no matter what"

Here's the reality your not. When you lose a baseball game you lose. Now I am all about being good sports about it. You don't have to be an asshole and pout or gloat about it depending on what side you are on. I am just saying that at the end of the day somebody wins and somebody loses.

And maybe losing isn't a bad thing after all.

But the children in America don't ever have to feel the disappointment and shame of losing. It's not even the fact that every child is valuable, because they are. It's just the fact that some children are going to win and some children are going to lose. Many could say it depends on the culture and their upbringing, and that probably has something to do with it.

But in the end the kid who was always determined in school, who always was ambitious enough to work late will probably win. While the kid who didn't care much will lose.

Maybe this reality of 'tolerance' that is flushed out in the idea that 'everyone is a winner' has formed the laziness of my generation and is continually causing damage in the next.

Everyone is valuable. Everyone is worth something. Everyone should be treated equally.

But not everyone is a winner. Because if everyone was a winner then the kids who worked extra hard wouldn't get the recognition that they deserved and the kids who didn't do much but smiled will get a cup full of false entitlement.

So should a five year old know her numbers and her letters? I'm not exactly sure but I know if she doesn't catch on soon she might get a cup full of false reality and will be living with her parents when she is twenty eight.

Holy Entitlement.

I just finished reading Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. As I was reading this book people continued to ask me what it was about and my response was, "I'm not exactly sure." It wasn't that I didn't know what was going on in the book I just didn't know how to explain the complexity of it.

Sometimes it is better to get the whole picture before you start scrutinizing over the details. The whole story is centered on a main character who is burdened by being and African female in the early 1960's. Tambu is this main character's name and she is first introduced as a little girl wanting to attend school. While I didn't think that wanting to attend school could be the basis of an actual novel I soon realized that wanting to go to school was the greatest aspiration and accomplishment for Tambu, or any African women.

While many people would assume that someone who was not very educated would not be very astute or observant however, it is not the case with this little girl. Tambu is extremely observant and reflective about what goes on around her.

A certain myriad of events happen that land her at the mission for what she always dreamed to do, school. While she is on her way there, with her beloved and generous uncle, she thinks through something that seems to be literal in her experience, but i think it is metaphorically universal.

"But the real situation was not so simple. Although I was vague at the time and could not have described my circumstances so aptly, the real situation was this: Babamukuru was God, therefore I had arrived in Heaven. I was in danger of becoming an angel, or at the very least a saint, and forgetting how ordinary humans existed- from minute to minute and from hand to mouth. The absence of dirt was proof of the other-worldly nature of my new home. I knew, had known all my life, that living was dirty and I had been disappointed by the fact." (pg. 70)

Babamukuru was the head master at the mission and also was her uncle. He was the wealthiest elder in her family and was the main provider for his sister's and brothers. To be in his house was to be in the wealthiest home that could be perceived by Tambu. But, she has a good point. She knows that being in such a nice and wealthy place could leaver her believing that she was entitled to be clean and wealthy. This entitlement was a mind set that she knew could have trapped her in feeling elite. Feeling like she was better then those who worked on the farm without education. She wanted to feel clean. But, she knew that she was not entitled to feel clean.

Tambu was afraid of the entitlement of being clean. This was an opportunity, an act of grace and if she couldn't understand that she knew she would lose her understanding of humanity.

When I started thinking through this idea I realized that I feel just as entitled because of my potential position in the church. I feel entitled to be clean and to forget the dirt that I experience every day as a human being living in this world. While, Tambu experienced dirt on a physical level I experience on a metaphorical level.

Dirt is not better or worse than clean, because dirt is what we all experience. We are all have dirt and in my thinking, metaphorically we all have an opportunity to get clean.

I am not equating dirt with sin, although it does happen, I am equating dirt with the human body. With the human reaction and with the human limitation that we all feel.

Here's the deal. I believe that Jesus was clean and dirty. He was clean because he knew and acted on the proper way to treat humanity. He was clean because he was divine. But, he was dirty because he was physically limited. I know that he could do miracles but that was because he was divine. He was killed which means he was also physical.

Jesus didn't need to feel the entitlement of being clean because he was just clean just like he was dirty. We are not entitled to be clean but we are given the opportunity to get clean, without forgetting that we also need to be dirty.

Great Expectations Or Ruined Relationships?

The Question I have is what is the point of giving people expectations? Do we love people that way? I honestly think that if you truly loved someone you wouldn't have a false pretense of who they were and you wouldn't have a false pretense of there actions towards or against you.

I feel like the reality of expectations has made our culture extremely individualistic and selfish. Perfectionism has stemmed from this idea and so has jealously. These expectations that we put on people and that they put on us is our conceptual lenses becoming the reality of the way that we see the world. We are not people but a sequence full of events that has some correlation to the person next to us.

When this sequence of events becomes expected then the individual starts to determine his or her value by there own sequence of events. If their experiences don't match up to their determined expectations than they are therefore cast into the realm of insanity and scandal.

If a person wealthy from birth, and has had certain expectations pushed upon them from said persons to continue to achieve and go after a great amount of wealth in their adult life is ruined by a bent or conviction to go serve in the peace corp that person from wealth has become the scandal of the neighborhood.

If a person that is born in poverty, and has had certain expectations pushed upon them from said persons that they will be always in poverty, if the person born in poverty then gets out and becomes wealthy, he or she becomes the scandal of the neighborhood.

That is why the story of the Prince and the Pauper is so well known, because it is an ugly reality. This feeling that people get when they are breaking someone else's expectations is one of either complete rebellion or complete sorrow.

If two people fall in love and then start expecting that love every morning from the other person they have taken that love for granted. The love they share between each other is not a selfish love, or a love to be used, but it is a gift. A gift that each person decides to give every morning.

Now there is a difference between the actuality of expectation and the actuality of longing. To long for something brings the human being into a place of dependence. While expectation is putting the human being into a place of power and control.

My thinking is that when Jesus discipled his twelve followers he did not expect them to understand his massive human divinity rather he longed for them to understand it and to eventually live it out.

Christ does not play the ventriloquist and pull the strings when he wants us to move. He does not have any expectation for us. He loves us. He yearns for us to understand that love but he does not expect that we will.

This idea of expectation for other people trap us into becoming God. We long to control other people and a lot of times we set up expectations with communication and wait for those we 'love' to fail. We set up our children and our spouses and our friends to fail because we expect.

We think that because a person we care about is in the hospital and we pray to God for healing that God will heal us because we expect God to love us.

But what if we stopped expecting?

Coming

The Coming is like feeling the winds of a tornado.

These winds do not feel natural as they ripple around you and through you. The rain you can protect yourself from, the lightening and the thunder are in the distance but the winds are a natural erosion.

That is what the coming feels like. It feels like a natural erosion that seems to rip through my being. The Coming has shaked and thrown my existence around like a rag doll.

The interesting reality is that when an individual comes back to the coming they start to realize how destructive it actually is.

Tornado winds eventually stop but The Coming winds are poisonous. These winds eventually stop but they leave you with a feeling that seems to never stop. You always feel like you are in a whirlwind of destructive thoughts and emotions.

And if you stick around The Coming for too long you find that you start to think that the destruction is natural and normal. You get used to the erosion and it becomes part of your daily self reflection.

Then The Coming starts living through you. It starts seeping through your pores and infects your conversations. It eventually infests your relationships and starts to erode them. The Coming flows through your being into the other people around you and starts to influence their being as well.

"Ugly As Homemade Sin"

When families are called to undertake the responsibility of the individual sin.

Brought to you by the book of Deuteronomy.

Coming soon to this blog near you...

Unwanted Life

Waylon and I went to the mall this weekend. And we ended up going to the Decatur mall, which has a good few stores, but one of my favorite stores to go to is the pet store. Yes the mall has a pet store. And so every time Waylon and I go to this mall we always end up going to see the puppies. We have come very close to actually buying a puppy a few times.

The reason why I love this store is because I love dogs. I love playing with dogs and snuggling with dogs and just being around them. But it seems that more and more that I visit this store I walk away more sad. Simply because there is so much unwanted life in this world.

It's interesting how we glorify death. How we watch it on the movie screen, how we read about it in the newspaper and in our favorite novels, how we scatter it all over our lives. We tend to believe that the only best movies have a death scene of some kind, whether it involves explosions or shooting or the last breath of someone of old age it seems to be the only way that a movie seems to be good, or real, or deep.

While we are so obsessed with this reality of death we seem to reject the unwanted life that is all around us. The fascinating thing is that we are such an individualistic society that we easily say, "Everyone for themselves." So we build walls out of sarcasm, cynicism, pride, intelligence, anger, or even our ability to be the victim for everyone else. We build these walls so that we can keep people out. We build these walls with the mortar of self and the brick of pride so that the life that is around us can not get in through the cracks.

Then when death strikes we build windows in our walls and we view the person as an exaggerated version of themselves. We dress them up or dress them down and throw them against the cruxifiction of introspection in our own lives. We are like the way we are because they did this or didn't do that. But we wouldn't ever try and approach them while they were living.

We would never tell them how we really feel why they were sitting next to us at dinner on Tuesday night.

Just like we don't talk about that relative who has a bastard child, because it would just cost to much. It would cost too much to tear that wall down. Or we don't try and get involved with our neighbor who just got a divorce because her husband was having an affair. It's just easier to hear about it from everyone else. Maybe even that regretted one night stand that has left us with the decision whether or not to keep the baby. We get lost in the words and the seemingly cheap whore that is represented as our relationship with people.

All this unwanted life seems to seep through sometimes doesn't it? This unwanted life that we have tried so hard to avoid our whole entire life. But, what if we are missing the point? What if instead of glorifying death we start glorifying life? What would happen if we didn't look forward for the hero to bust a cap in the bad guy, but instead we watched for the simple life that deepens these characters.

Yes, I know death is inevitable. But why wait to start grasping at the life around you after death has sunk in?

8th Grade Assembly

"A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him." T. Merton

Do you ever remember having junior high assemblies? Where they got everyone in the stuffy, hot gym together and made you sit really really close to the person next to you. Then they told you through dramatic skits and colorful clothing that the best person you can be is yourself. Did anyone else leave middle school with these haunted memories or is it just me?

Well I haven't heard a "Just be yourself" speech in a long time, but about a month ago I stumbled through a book called New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton, and I found myself reading a "Just be yourself" speech. But it seemed to be less arbitrary from his point of view. He states that we are called to make a decision in our human state. This decision that T. Merton is writing about stems from the beginning of time. It is the decision of whether or not we are going to live out our lives in our created state or whether we are going to take a stick of dynamite to ourselves and face death. The decision of whether or not we are going to find our created being in our creator or if we are going to find our created being in something created.

This decision does not just impact our selves, like we often like to think, but it impacts the whole community. Many times we think that the self that we project upon other people or the self that we see in the mirror is either not good enough to be presented to the creator or is to good to be bothered with such trivial things like service.

When we have come to either of those conclusions we then set our eyes on the aesthetic lifestyle. We try and find our security in the things that seem to bide of our attention. We cling to our families, our lovers, our friends, our money, our pride, our selfish deprecation, even our theology. We create sand-built castles out of these things but when a storm comes the walls that are trying to protect our true selves become eroded. They get washed away in the senseless violence of death in the world.

This is all a side effect of trying to run away from just being ourselves. See, we aren't created in the waters of sin. We are created in the image of God. If we are created as 'sinners' then we cannot also be created in the image of God, because those two realities cannot exist together. They can sit side by side and be in existence but they cannot be intertwined.

So when we are asked to "Just be ourselves" in the essence of the kingdom of God we are asked to find our identity in that kingdom as children of God. This identity is not just a role that we play but is the redeemed person. We are called to be the child of God individually but also in community.

When we become to good for the community around us, and our created being finds identity in our pretentious piety we become again lost in the idol worship that swirled around the Israelites and that swirl around us.

The question remains; are you going to be yourself reflected in our creator? Or are you going to be marked and identified by your sin?

Trees, William Carlos Williams

Crooked, black tree

on your grey-black hillock,

ridiculously raised one step toward

the infinite summits of the night:

even you the few grey stars

draw upward into a vague melody

of harsh threads

But as you are from straining

against the bitter horizontals of

a north wind, - there below you

how easily the long yellow notes

of poplars flow upward in a descending

scale, each not secure in its own

posture -singularly woven.

All voices are blent willingly

against the heaving contra-bass

of the dark but you alone

warp yourself passionately to one side

in your eagerness.

Life of Bees

"The world will give you [a pure relief] once in a while, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where someonebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life." pg. 82

God of Relevance...

"What if we took Jesus to culture?" -Me

"No, Jesus goes where He wants." -Waylon

This state of mind that we seem to pursue as a church that we must chase after culture with the official stamp of Jesus totally is irrelevant. Simply because Jesus is alive, and he walks where he wants to. We cannot actually take Jesus anywhere because Jesus is the one leading.

Ironic that we so consistently want to be Jesus' missionaries and bring Jesus to people. In reality we are just following Christ to where he already has made his stamp. We are not his messengers we are His witnesses. We witness and proclaim what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do.

When we start getting startled and focused on what other churches are doing we become complacent to being witnesses to what Christ is doing. This is a very dangerous line to walk and could potentially be a catalyst for communal idol worship. When Christ becomes the God of relevance instead of the God of all then we have stumbled into a very dark place.

We start trying to proclaim the Gospel from darkness instead of from light. We start trying to proclaim the Gospel from a cultural impact instead of from a Jesus impact. This cultural relevance that seeps into our Gospel creates the fundamentalism and liberalism that we all despise from one point or from another. We get lost in the Black, White, or the Gray.

So are we going to worship the God of relevance or are we going to worship the God of all?

Easter Reflection.

We are in Holy Week.

This and the fact that I have been locked away in a library in Minnesota studying the aspects of faith have brought me to a reflection of the Easter story.

This is my Easter reflection: Christ defeats death by submitting to it and then overcoming it by the authority of life.

Now this seems to be the obvious realization when one comes into church on that annual Sunday morning.

However, I have not ever grappled with the reality that Christ submitted to death. He, giving up Heaven, put flesh on and adopted the human nature. This reality of human nature is not the same as the sinful nature. For Christ did not sin which displays that the human nature is not a sinful nature. If the human nature was the sinful nature Christ would not have been able to put flesh on. If the sacrifice of the pure lamb that morning was impure than the sacrifice would have been pointless. Christ submitted to death and in turn had the ability to defeat it through the authority of true life.

This reality of what true life is can be flushed out in the church by the renewal and the restoration of the dying souls, through the life of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. We are called to realize that when we die to ourselves every day we should walk joyfully into death because the authority of life that we will receive in turn has the ability to defeat death in everything that has fallen and is dying, by default not by choice. Because when you die by choice you are losing everything but in the process of losing everything you are gaining faith in which life is possible.

So would I give up Heaven for you? Yes because Christ gave up Heaven for me, but in doing so he unlatched the door that allows for every single person to live.

For Christ defeated death by submitting to it and then overcame it with the authority of Life.

Would I give up Heaven for you?

The reality of reaching into the depth of the deep darkness in someone else's soul by the light hand of the own tension in our soul truly determines the reality of our own capacity to love.

This reality of being in love, not romantically, but in life. We have masqueraded the light that we have been given through grace, by the sacrifice and life of Christ, through cultural relevance and our perception of seeing the world in the "gray area." So many times we view theology in concrete colors. Which seems appropriate because theology is the study of God but knowing God is not concrete, at least not in the way that we have propagated it.

God does not play by the rules of black and white. He, being the creator, determines the life that is being given. God determines whether rules even exist or not. With this in mind our black and white concrete realities cannot truly exist in the realm of our Creator because when we see the Good News as a big picture we realize that Christ put on flesh and submitted himself to this world and to a human nature. This reality is a paradox because Christ gave up Heaven for each of us to make sure that we would experience the ecstasy of God.

So, why should we be so concerned if we are commanded to love one another recklessly? What IF we were called to give up Heaven for our brother or sister?

This idea reminds me of the movie What Dreams May Come. Robin Williams is the main character and in the beginning of the movie he has a beautiful family. Two wonderful children and an amazing wife. Unfortunately his children get killed in a car accident and his beautiful life starts to fall apart. He and his wife go through a traumatic period and Williams is the sustaining foundation for their marriage. Then a sudden twist and Williams ends up getting killed in a freak car accident as well. He ends up going to Heaven and enjoys the wonder and awe of what Heaven could possibly be. Then one day he receives news that his wife has died and he gets excited because he figures he will see her, but he is told that since she ended her own life that her soul is sent where the most despairing souls are sent. Williams can't handle the reality of not spending eternity with his soul mate and goes on a quest to save her. He is meant with the darkest challenges of the soul, and finally ends up outside their house. He is told that if he goes in he may never come out, because when you are surrounded by darkness you start to forget what hope is like.

He goes in to save her and ends up losing everything.


But he wakes to find himself in Heaven. He wonders how he got there and he sees his wife. She told him that when he lost it all is when she gained it.

The simple sacrifice of losing Heaven for someone else. The simple quest of loving the other person in a way that represents the cross.

The question still lingers...would I give up Heaven for you? As I reflect on Easter in my next post I think the answer will be found.