The freedom of discipline.

On my internship I found out that I am a crazed fundamentalist. This was a eye opener for me, but I guess when you think the Bible is holistic in it's message and every word of it is truth, you find yourself not only on the conservative side of life, but on the fundamentalist side of life. Wild right?

Since I hold the Bible to be holistic in it's teaching one thing that has become apparent to me the past couple of months is the need for discipline. A couple of weeks before my wedding I realized that it is radical to want to love your enemy. Most preachers would get up and say something like, 'God has called us to love our enemies. While we don't always have enemies that want to kill us, we do have people we do not like. We should show kindness to these people and go out of our way to care for them.'

While this sounds like it is a good application to this wild scripture, I think we are missing the depth behind what this radical life would actually look like if it was played out in creation. Being kind to people we don't like can get us to some pretty interesting places, but it also can cover up what we are really saying in our mind. We all know that often we say one thing and we are thinking what we would have said if we had either enough courage or enough meanness in our lives.

Kindness does not cover a multitude of sin. Love does.

But the question remains, where does loving your enemy and finding freedom in discipline collide?

I read the first five books of the Bible last year, and the consistent theme that I noticed was this statement; "Walk in the ways of the LORD". This command is fleshed out in Deuteronomy 6,
“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵ And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. ⁶ And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. ⁷ Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. ⁸ Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. ⁹ Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

God commands Israel to follow his commands and his decrees and to do it with a holistic life. Be disciplined in your love for your God. Be intentional with your children in this love. Be intentional in your community with this love.

As we know the Israelites had a hard time living this love out. They had a hard time walking in the ways of the Lord. God deals with them in his own way. This way leads to Jesus and we find ourselves in the middle of Jesus' ministry and in the middle of the sermon on the mount, Jesus' greatest sermon.

In the end of chapter five we see Jesus stating that if anyone asks of you give him extra and then he goes on to talk about loving your enemies, because of course you want to be as perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. Loving your enemies is allowing us the opportunity to become complete. It is allowing us to see the restored world that God first created in Genesis One. It is not about being perfect in the sense of worldly perfection, but it is about being complete. Being whole. However, I admit that I have an extremely hard time at being nice to my enemies. Actually I would rather avoid them, and on my worst days I want bad things to happen to them.

So how do I clean my heart of my dislike for the people who are shitting all over God's world? How do I find love for those closest to me who are crazed and mean? How do I find compassion for those who have committed injustice?

I think the reason for the Sermon on the Mount is to refocus the Israelites on Deuteronomy six. I think Jesus is seeing a world where the people in it follow the law without fault, but the heart is not being addressed. Jesus is telling this world what it looks like to love the Lord with everything. Jesus is telling the world what it looks like to walk with love, to talk to our children about this love and to nail it on our doors and gates. This love is about how we view the world, how our hearts and our souls and our emotions lead our physical.

To live in love with the God of the Bible, we are to do this with all aspects of our lives. This is where I believe discipline comes into our lives. However, I must implement that this discipline has to be partnered with the following of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit involved discipline is frivolous. However, when we decide to follow the Spirit in his active role we can grasp at this idea of discipline. There is freedom within this relationship because it allows us to make the choice. We know longer are enslaved to our impulses or even what we want, but we have the opportunity to make a choice that will benefit us in the end.

The world we live has been founded on instant gratification. If we want something we have it whether it is good for us or not. I truly believe this is where our emotional existence is as a church. We want what we feel, rather than disciplining our emotional existence . The artist in me fights against this idea of discipline, but the peace bringer in me finds it essential to all relationships. When we put our emotional existence under the love of Christ we can surrender our need to emotionally react to whatever comes into our world. We can follow the Holy Spirit and rather than lash out when we don't get our way we can have peace within our hearts. This discipline is needed if the church is going to be any sort of influence in this world. I truly believe when we put our emotional existence under the love of Christ we can love our enemies and we can see a world that is called to be complete. We can love our enemies because we can control our emotional impulses to try and run the world the way that we see fit. When our sense of injustice is put under the scrutiny of following the Holy Spirit and is no longer based off our emotional history and impulses we will be able to see the God of restoration more clearly in a world that is scattered and in chaos.

I have nothing else to say. I am without words. Or maybe the words are without me. The end and start of a new journey.

Waiting.

It seems to be a consistent theme in my life. Waiting for one thing to end and another to start. Waiting for the appointed time to be upon me. Waiting, counting the days, wondering what the future will be. There is a sense of that waiting within my soul, yet there is also a sense of slow motion. Seeing things, people, event and even words spoken in slow motion. Having the awareness that the decisions Waylon and I make determine our future relationship. Having the starving pride of knowing that I am a trained college graduate and I am unemployed. Sitting and waiting for something to happen while knowing nothing will.

I watch a lot of bad movies. I take the dog out. I clean. I read. I seldom write. I am not discontent. I am just here.

Waiting, patiently, waiting to seek out the happenings of glory in the world of Assumption.

Happy Endings.

I just finished a book called The Book of Lost Things. It is by an Irish writer with the last name of Connolly. I guess his main genre of writing is mystery thrillers, however, this book is focused on a young boy who goes through the season of turning into a man by being coerced to a secret land. The story starts off with his mother dying. His father remarries and has another child. During this whole process the boy is going through some interesting changes. He finds himself hearing the whispers of the books in his room and he is enticed into this magical world that is hidden in the sunken garden in the backyard. He finds himself trying to save his mother. Through his perilous journey in this strange land he meets people who come to his aid. These men have helped the boy with his jealousy and hatred, because as we all know childhood is not always sweet. We often as a society reminisce about our romantic childhood, but if we truly look at it with a skeptical eye we see hurt, pain, fear, even hatred. Through the book the young boy is tested in various ways and encounters the villain of the book.

The crooked man.

The young boy meets the crooked man and finds by the end of the book that the crooked man is evil. The intent of the crooked man is to get the young boy on the throne and to consume the heart of his younger brother. This is how the crooked man has stayed alive for so many years. At the climax of the book the crooked man is trying to persuade the man character to give him his younger brother.

The crooked man tells him that in the real world the main character will feel pain, sorrow, and grief. The people that the main character loves will die and leave him in his loneliness. The fantasy world is the place where the main character can be in control. In this world the young boy can have a happy ending.

The young boy does not relent. We often meet children like this. Those who have such courage and such integrity that nothing sways them from such virtue. These days, those children are far and few, but they still remain. The main character stands his ground. He goes back into the real world and he experiences everything that the crooked man proclaimed. He experiences the pain and sorrow of losing the ones he loves to sickness and to death. He experiences the pain of loneliness. However, at the end of his life he collects himself and he looks at his full life that he choose to lead. He finds that he did live a love of great love and a life of great pain, but he still lived.

For a happy ending filled with love cannot be without pain.

What else is there?

I haven't really cried in two weeks.

It is refreshing to not feel like my emotions are on high alert all the time. During my internship I encountered such sadness and such loneliness that I cried often. I would cry on my way to and from work. I would cry with Waylon. I would cry in the shower.

I was dealing with such emotional weight. Such despair. I was seeing men and women sick and I was seeing men and women at their final moments. Often I was paged to pray over men and women who were in there last day of life.

I was angry as well as sad. It didn't seem fair. I would sit and talk with hospice patients and it was like I was seeing everything in slow motion. I would think as I sat, how many more times will they sit here and talk about their week? How many more times will they eat their favorite meal? How many more times will they kiss their wife goodnight?

These questions would weigh so heavily on my heart. I would smile and continue to talk with them but on the inside I was grieving for them. I was mourning their shortened life. I saw everything through that lens. I so desperately tried to see every situation in a different light, but I still came back to the reality that each person I visit is going die within the next few weeks, if not sooner. I still came back to the reality that the family that so cherished this person is going to loose them.

And then my internship ended. I walked away on a Friday and I have not been back. It was all very anti climatic really. I started moving, I finished up my college classes, I continued to do things for my wedding. It was like the last four months had been a dream, and I suddenly woke up.

The three or four days after my internship I stayed in bed. I was exhausted. It had felt like I had just been in immense battle for the last four months. Like I had traveled by boat and fought through tenuous situations to come back home. I have never really felt that way.

I got my energy back up and started to live my life again. I went to Naperville to do some wedding stuff with my mom and some of the women who work with her kept asking if I was nervous for my wedding. One woman actually told me, "that I looked really put together" compared of course to my impending decision in two weeks to wed.

I didn't really say this then, but I wanted too. I wanted to say, after the last four months, after all the death, and the sorrow, and the sadness, after all the situations where you depend solely on what you have learned to get you through the hard questions. After the battle, a celebration seems easy. Yes there are nerves, and we want everything to go as planned, but it almost seems simple compared to the complexity of the dying.

I am excited to get married. I am thankful for those who have helped along the way, especially my mom, who has been absolutely wonderful. But, I know better. I know that this day is more about the celebration of two individuals joining together than it is about who gets to sit where at the reception.

Waylon is the man who will take care of me when I am in that final stage of life. I am that women who has made the commitment to do the same. Everyone should be loved until the end even if the sorrow is great and the sadness is overbearing. It seems ironic that my internship was full of sickness and death and my life is heading towards newness. Four months of sorrow and death in preparation for a new life. There is some kind of contrast that needs to be seen in all of this. Marriage is not a trivial life situation that one can get in and out of. It is a life long commitment that acquires a sense of understanding even in great sorrow.

I know better now, than to get caught up in the trivial pursuits of this life. I have seen and witnessed to the end and I will continue to live my life out in such a way that is a testimony to the eternal life compared to the passing one we all live. Movies, songs, and pictures do not capture death appropriately.

Death is not beautiful.

Don't mock life in such a way to say that death is beautiful. When we believe that we stain life with such hypocrisy. When we stop crying we forget the pain and the sorrow that reminds us life is different. Death happens once. Life happens every day that we are given. Do not throw mud at the life you are given. If you do than you are already dead.

Shrouded in Sadness.

There came a point in my internship when I stopped visiting 'sick' people and I started visiting people.

We are all in desperate straits.

People seem to avoid hospitals because they want to separate themselves from the reminder of sickness, of the decaying of the body, of the end of life. If they can segregate themselves from the sick, than they it will never happen to them. They will never get sick. They will never die.

I talked with a wife of a patient last week who told me that her husband had been struggling with different ailments for the last five years. He almost died the night before. Her doctor is doing everything for him. The man is living in a nursing home and wants to die. He is tired of the pain and the quantity of life versus the quality of live. He wants to go home but the doctor is fixed on curing versus caring.

We had another patient die in the hospital this week. Chaplains had been visiting her and her family all week. When I went to visit with her the family had me come up hold her hand and pray for an easing of her pain. She was in a tremendous pain. Her family didn't want to enter into hospice because they didn't want to deal with the reality that there family member was dying. She came in on a Monday and died on a Thursday.

Funeral homes usually will get the wake in around twelve, have the funeral service at two and have the body buried by three. In California they even have drive by wakes.

There is no acceptance of death in our society. Everyone wants to live forever.

People no longer accept the pain and death of the world. They are no longer shrouded in sadness for the moment, but rather regress the pain, ignore it, pass along by it.

Christians are called to carry their crosses and follow Jesus. This means picking up their pain, sorrow, their sadness and following Jesus.

They are not called to regress it, to ignore it, or pass along by it, they are called to pick their pain up and carry it into the presence of Jesus.

I stopped visiting sick people because I realized that there is no real difference between the person in the hospital bed and myself. We both are in desperate straits and we both need grace.

Human Documents, Living Death...

If you don't know where I am or what I am doing than this is a good blog for you to read. I started working at Decatur Memorial Hospital and Hospice on January 4th and my life has never been the same. I am the chaplain Intern.

Chaplains are constantly working in crisis ministry. My mentor, who is the lead Chaplain at the hospital and in hospice said, "You will experience and see more here in six months that working in the church for six years." This is a man who worked in the church as the pastor for twenty years and now has worked as a chaplain for twenty-two. He has shown me when to listen, when to talk, how to talk, and how to shine the love of Christ to people who are in all kinds of life situations.

The more I visit with people, the more I hear their stories. The more I try to encourage the more I see the need for Christ, the more I see the need for scripture, and the more I see the need for the active healthy church.

Psalm 14:1

"The fool says in his heart "There is no God."

This verse has been made apparent as I have worked with human documents. My job is to go visit men and women in the hospital and in hospice and offer spiritual support. I have visited all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. Some who have had all the cards stacked against them. Some who have family abuse, death, addiction. Some who have been in church all of their lives but are still not assured of their salvation. Some that don't want anything to do with God and are angered by the name Christian.

The men and women in the hospital are different than the men and women I visit in hospice. Hospital patients usually have a chance of leaving their hospital room and going home to live.

Hospice patients are in their dying days.

Visiting men and women who are dying has put a spin on my perception of life.

I want to live.

I don't want to be on my dying bed, at any age, and feel like I haven't done enough. The only way I can combat this thought is to find my security in Christ. The hope bringer.

When I visit men and women who are dying, all the shit that we think is important in our youth holds no importance. The stances we take in our opinions, in our important arguments, in our self righteous lifestyles doesn't hold water when we are in our dying days. "Generations come and generations go." Ecc. 1:2

We will not be remembered. Our relationships will be forgotten. Our names will be forgotten.

Unless we are under, around, and within Christ.

If we choose to be found within his life, death and resurrection then we can find enjoyment within our daily lives, because we will know that even though we live a momentary life, on our death beds we can say that we lived.

I visited a patient in hospice who wasn't done yet. She had more to do. She had a job, a family even a dog who needed her care. Who cried when my mentor and I walked in because she thought we were there to give her last rights. We assured her that we were there to visit and to offer support.

She died a week later.

We can either choose to be in a state of living death, where we find discontentment in every relationship, in every life situation, in every moment. Or we can find ourselves within Christ and we can be content with what we have and with who we are. We can find our security in the true life rather or we can deceive ourselves by trying to find life within our death.

4 Years

I started this blog in 2005 to record the different things that I would experience in college. As I look back on the different postings I have seen a huge change from where I was as an eighteen year old girl to who I am as a twenty one year old women.

I have seen, heard, tasted, and experienced things I never thought I would in four years. I have been across oceans, across borders, across cultural divides. I have tried to end my blog a dozen or so times in my effort to walk away from my self-reflective life, but I always learned something new that impacted my walk with Christ and so I needed to communicate it to someone.

In the last four years I have thought about giving up my faith, feeling that it was foolish and silly and based on myth, but the more I learn the less I feel like I know, and the less I know shows me that I am a small part of creation. This revelation has shown me that sometimes there is no good choice to choose, sometimes our human limitations keep us from God, sometimes sin allows for grace.

I have changed mentally along this way and last night was my last learning lesson of 2008. Waylon took me out to dinner and to a movie and we were driving back to Lincoln. We were talking about the many things that happened in 2008 and the many things that were going to continue to happen as we grow together.

It then hit me; our life is going to soon be over. Sure we have, hopefully another sixty, maybe seventy years left, but that's it. Then the trip is over. Waylon made a very insightful statement, "I think people realize that life is going to fly so they work as hard as they can, but I just want to snuggle and talk as many walks as I can." My fiance has faced death in the face on more than one occasion and has realized that life can be as simple as we make it.

So, this year I am going to make each moment count. I am going to take as many walks as I can, I am going to have as many conversations as I can, I am going to represent Jesus as much as I can through my actions. While, this may look like a 'resolution' it is more of a faith statement. I am going to stop being afraid of humanity and I am going to start trusting God.

Because life is just a myriad of different moments that could be linear or could be cyclical, but they are just that, a myriad of different moments.

Moments that contain a certain number of breaths, a certain number of looks, and a certain number of words.

"The ice is thin enough for walking, the rope is worn enough to climb, throat is dry enough for talking, the world is crumbling but I know why.

Storm is wild enough for sailing, bridge is weak enough to cross, spine is frail enough for fighting, I'm home enough to know I'm lost.

It's just enough to be strong, in the broken places, in the broken places. It's just enough to be strong, should the world rely on faith tonight?"

The land unfair enough for planting, barren enough to conceive, poor enough to gain the treasure, enough a cynic to believe, enough a cynic to believe.

It's just enough to be strong, in the broken places, in the broken places. It's just enough to be strong, should the world rely on faith tonight?

Confuse enough o know direction, sun eclipsed enough to shine, still enough to find me trouble, see enough to know I'm blind, see enough to know I'm blind.

Just enough to be strong in the broken places, in the broken places, Just enough to be strong should the world rely on faith tonight?

Should the world rely on faith tonight?"

Through my moments in the next four years, I long to be within Christ.

Across 1-80

"Everything is Southern Illinois south of 1-80"

This is something that I have heard from my good city family and friends ever since I decided to come to LCC. This statement, while is not exactly correct, because LCC is in Central Illinois, the pastoral difference seems to be huge.

I come from a church called Community Christian Church, which is located, well all over the Chicago land area. The pastors that I have gotten to know through my childhood, adolescence, and now young adulthood play guitar hero, drink beer, watch movies that are rated R, drink lattes, have decent hair cuts, and don't end every conversation with God bless.

These pastors were the run of the mill pastors. They didn't seem to be holier than anyone else, but were more like doctors. They found a passion in trying to keep humans healthy, but in a spiritual sense, rather than a medical sense.

And then I moved. I moved south of I-80 and suddenly felt like I was living in the 1950's. The pastors are still a large part of the community development. They are still part of the reason people are moral and why people still go to church. They are still the capstone of the church down here. Now, I have met many pastors in and around Central Illinois, and I would never want to give them a bad name. However, there is only one or two that I have felt completely comfortable around.

I think the reason that I don't feel comfortable with some pastors down here is because they still play the part of the holy Shepard. They do end every conversation with God Bless, and seek to find the holiness in everything. While it at times makes me uncomfortable, it also is fascinating. People invite their pastor to major life events, and the pastor actually comes, when the pastor does your grandpa's funeral, he actually remarks about the summer that was without rain and how your grandpa remained faithful. The pastor within small communities knows the family church history.

I think that the pastors in Naperville are try too hard to be human, and I think the pastors in Central Illinois try too hard to be holy. Maybe if we throw a mixed party and invite all of them they could rub off on each other.

Moral Theology is Dead.

I heard this song on the radio tonight when I was driving home. It struck me in sort of a funny way. The first two lines specifically, "I'm sittin' at a bar on the inside, waitin' for a ride on the outside'. I actually wrote down the lines on a receipt so I would remember what I wanted to write about. The reason these lines are interesting is that it is the perfect image of what the false self has the ability to do. I have come to the conclusion that moral theology is a waste of my time. Jesus Christ didn't die so that I can be moral! He didn't rise on the third day so that he could find a bunch of disciples swearing that they would be moral citizens. I understand that morality is part of walking in God's ways through Christ, but it certainly is not the main component.

I am so weary of moral theology.

But, these two lines struck me, not because of my problem with moral theology, but because it shows the very fine line with human nature and with a sinful nature. Human nature cannot be originally sinful, because if it was Jesus would have been born sinful. The Catholics think they can weasel their way out of this one, but it has a lot of holes. So, if Jesus was human, and Jesus was sinless than human nature must be made in something else. If this is true there must be a distinction between human nature and sinful nature.

These two lines reminded me of the line that we walk as humans. It can be a completely volatile line and it can be a completely beautiful line. The conservative evangelicals would say run as far away from the line as you can, so to not enter into anything compromising, and I certainly see the wisdom in that, but what if you find yourself in a situation where you must choose the lesser of two evils.

Like Bonhoeffer for example. Or Jesus.

Jesus walked the line, because the line is not sinful. Being human is not a sin. That is the line that we find ourselves walking. The walk of humanity. It would be easy to run away from the line. To not ever look back. To put ourselves in very safe places, places we consider divine, but the line is still there, because we are still human. We have been created. We are not the creator.
We walk a line of humanity that has the potential to cause us great harm. This line has the potential to cause others great harm as well, but it also has the ability to bring out the most beauty.

Are you willing to walk the line. Are you willing to set aside your moral limitations and actually admit that you are human? If I was forced into believing that moral theology is the key to understanding Christ I would be completely willing to surrender my faith and my belief system so I could be comfortable being human.

God created me human, shouldn't I embrace it?

The Superfulous Spit.

One day.


That's all it took to discover the shocking understanding of the great hocker. In other words I was standing on top of the lowest hand rail and leaning over the bridge. I noticed a shiny bald spot. I collect some spit, I aimed, and I shot.


And in that one day I changed that man's life. Spit is an understatement to the way life is supposed

One day.

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.