A Near-Life Experience

Mary the Law Breaker

2011-12-18T16:43:00.000-08:00

Three years ago Waylon and I tag teamed a sermon together during one of the weeks leading up to Christmas. We went back and forth telling the story of Mary and Joseph. I told Mary's story and Waylon told Joseph's story. I reflect on that sermon now as I sit in a church that will not even allow women to become deacons. I sit and reflect on the story of Mary as I am a women who has no voice within a local church.

Mary had no voice.

What an odd situation. God chooses to use a woman who has no voice to bridge the eternal gap between humanity and the completeness of God and his Kingdom. I started to read a book about Mary, written by an Evangelical man. He tried to exegete the life of Mary, so that we may better understand her role within the story. I gave up on him by the second chapter, because he seemed to miss the point.

As do many people who have never experienced pain, oppression, or poverty. Mary was completely ostracized from her community. She carried around that reputation for the rest of her life. That reputation of being unfaithful to her husband, or being crazy enough to believe that God impregnated her. I am sure you have met one or two people within your life who had held similar views about their role within the Kingdom. You know, the person on the train, who says he is a prophet, or the woman that walks into your church and claims she has a special understanding of scripture.

Jesus wasn't just born in a humble cave. Jesus was born to a woman who held a dangerous reputation. A woman who did not even give birth within her community, but rather had her husband, help her give birth. A woman who did not follow the cleanly laws of the Israelite birth process but rode on a donkey to a foreign place to give birth. And let me tell you, pregnancy is a nervy process to begin with, let alone having to deliver a baby in a cold, dark, dank, place. This woman did not follow the Israelite law in anything. Yet she bore Abba's son.

A woman that had no voice brought Abba's son into the world. A woman who had a dangerous reputation raised Jesus, had authority over what he ate, and wore, and what kind of chores he would have around the house. I would be curious to sit across from Mary, and ask her how she felt about her son. And, how she reconciled her dangerous, law-breaking, reputation with trying to teach Jesus the truth and the law. While, I sit here reflecting on Mary the law-breaker, I ask myself that same question. Will I try and raise my child with an understanding that moral Christianity is crucial to understanding the life of Jesus, or will I try and demonstrate a faith that is more interested in following the Holy Spirit than in morality? Maybe a little bit of both?

Discipline

2011-11-27T16:33:00.000-08:00

The last year I have been leading a women's bible study. We started going through 1 Corinthians and I eventually asked if they wanted the group to have worksheets while working through a book of the Bible.

They loved the idea. So, I took a model I learned in school and I changed the language to fit within the group's framework. I had all the group members buy a copy of The Bible book by book, and we started on 1 John together.

Every week we did some exegetical and contextual work. Every week we tried to immerse the group within the understanding that the Holy Spirit is crucial to our understanding of scripture. Every week I challenged their old framework. It was a lot of work but slowly I saw some of their old framework shift and take a new shape.

Now, many people would consider this discipline a waste of time. A lot of leaders in ministry focus on service and outreach to challenge their people. I think that is a wonderful discipline to practice. Some of the most convicting moments within my life have been in step with some sort of service activity.

However, I will defend the discipline of challenging theological frameworks using scripture even after the grave. I find it crucially important to our faith because while we will meet Jesus in service to others, without the eyes and ears to recognize what He looks like we will likely miss a holy moment.

Challenging this group's interpretative framework was not motivated by pride or Biblical arrogance. I am not foolish enough to believe that I have the key to an interpretative formula, but I am aware enough to know that the Kingdom's foundation is the many different views of faith that our ancestors experienced in their own life.

Hebrews 11 paints this ancestral illustration of faith that we get to be apart of as Kingdom people. Every person in that faith list had a different experience with God and the Kingdom. And every person within that list had a whole framework that had to be shaken, twisted, and molded into a framework that could glimpse more and more of the Kingdom.

Moses was not ready to lead the people into the promise land when God called him. God had to rework Moses' framework over a period of time to bring him to a place of leadership and understanding.

The women in my group, me included, have been immersed in a specific framework which limits our understanding of the Triune God. However, through the story we have been given within scripture, through our experience, through other Kingdom people, and through our Christian tradition we place ourselves in a place where God continues to shake, stir, twist and mold our framework.

Our Bible studies are a wonderful example of this discipline. As we are constantly being challenged with a Gospel that does not fit within our White, Middle class, slightly racist, American, gender specific framework.

As we meet we challenge each other to seek the story within scripture and to wrestle with the faith of our ancestors.

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A glimpse

2011-11-26T13:13:00.001-08:00

I love coming home and looking through old photo albums. I actually just was given a photo album for Christmas that brought me to a reflection on why I love photographs. I often come in when I am at my parent's home and I mill through the photographs from when we were kids. I also love to look at photos of my folks as kids. One of the reasons I love photos is because it's a moment captured within time. Photographs reveal so much about the moment captured. The fashion style popular at the time, the relational dynamic, the age, and the action of the moment. I don't look back on the past and mourn the lost time, or wish for my time now to illustrate something similar to that life. I do look at photos to see who I was, to find my role within my family in a sense. Photographs give us glimpses of a story. However, interpretation is crucial in looking at these captured moments for everyone within the picture usually has a different feeling about that time in their life. I look at our family photos very differently then my siblings do, because I was at a different stage of life. My family photos remind me of our Holy Scriptures. We are often given glimpses of story and often times we interpret these glimpses differently as we grow throughout our lives. A part of a story means something different to us at age fifteen then at age thirty. When we experience the story for ourselves throughout our many days we get the opportunity to get a glimpse of the Kindom in our Holy Scriptures. So, what story have you been reflecting on these days?

2011-11-23T05:05:00.001-08:00

This year has been a year of changes for the Lawrence family. We have been busy and searching this last year and it has been a fruitful, hard, challenging year thus far. Last December I quit my full time job to go back to Seminary to become a chaplain and that was life changing, in many ways. I finished my first summer and got a part job job at my favorite coffee shop over the summer. This last year has been a great year for our marriage, as we have gotten closer and have finally started a real faith journey together. Which is probably why we got pregnant in September! We were both shocked to find out we were expecting, but we are both excited for this new chapter in our lives to start. Right after my 24th Birthday(I know I am in mid twenties yuck!) I attended one of Waylon's prayer services. Every Wednesday he has a prayer service for the church where he leads them through three different scriptures and through three different times of prayer. It is a nice silent respite in the middle of the week. Well, we were in 1 Samuel reading over the life of Hannah. As we were reading through her life situation her character and her faithfulness struck me in a very convicting way.If you don't know much about Hannah, she was a woman that was married to a guy named Elkanah, who was head over heels in love with her. Elkanah had two wives and Hannah was the one that he truly loved. However, Hannah could not have children and this was a great burden to her. In Hannah's time having kids was the main role of a woman who was married. It was an honor and a great responsibility to bear children and to bear a lot of children. If you had a whole ton of kids you would have been considered a pretty important woman of that time. Hannah's sister wife, if I can use a cultural term, was a bitch. She was always being mean to Hannah, because Hannah was barren. For years Hannah dealt with ridicule and insecurity. Normally a person who is suffering cries out to God. I do. It is not recorded that Hannah spoke to God about her troubles until 1 Samuel 1. Until Hannah is so distraught that she cries out in such a physical and emotional way that the priest in the temple thinks she is drunk! Hannah comes to God in complete vulnerability and asks God to remember her in her misery. The Lord listens and remembers Hannah and blesses her with a son. Hannah responds to the Lord with a powerful prayer to the Lord. Through her faithfulness and trust in the Lord, and through her experience with the Living and active God she responds in a powerful and prophetic way. Hannah prayed: I'm bursting with God-news! I'm walking on air. I'm laughing at my rivals. I'm dancing my salvation. 2-5 Nothing and no one is holy like God, no rock mountain like our God. Don't dare talk pretentiously— not a word of boasting, ever! For God knows what's going on. He takes the measure of everything that happens. The weapons of the strong are smashed to pieces, while the weak are infused with fresh strength. The well-fed are out begging in the streets for crusts, while the hungry are getting second helpings. The barren woman has a houseful of children, while the mother of many is bereft. 6-10 God brings death and God brings life, brings down to the grave and raises up. God brings poverty and God brings wealth; he lowers, he also lifts up. He puts poor people on their feet again; he rekindles burned-out lives with fresh hope, Restoring dignity and respect to their lives— a place in the sun! For the very structures of earth are God's; he has laid out his operations on a firm foundation. He protectively cares for his faithful friends, step by step, but leaves the wicked to stumble in the dark. No one makes it in this life by sheer muscle! God's enemies will be blasted out of the sky, crashed in a heap and burned. God will set things right all over the earth, he'll give strength to his king, he'll set his anointed on top of the world! After I encountered Hannah and her story in July I felt that God was preparing my heart for a little Lawrence. However, Waylon and I felt that it would be better to wait a year before we starting trying and a month and half later we were surprised with a baby. While it wasn't an immaculate conception I do feel like the Lord had a definite role to play in this whole process. I know I do not relate to Hannah's years of being barren I do find her prayer to be encouraging and to be proof of an existential response to an eternal reality. As I passed my twelfth week of being pregnant and I will enter into my second semester in a couple of weeks Hannah's story has also pointed me towards the Immaculate Conception and the role of Mary within the Kingdom Story. As Advent approaches I continue to reflect on Mary and Jesus and the story that changed the world.

Communion meditation

2011-09-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

Communion meditation

My women's small group has been studying 1 John lately. One of the biggest themes we have noticed during our study is the contrast of light and dark. We get to choose whether we live in the light or in the dark. If we accept Christ and his love into our life than we are living in the light and if w reject Christ an his love than we are living in the dark.

John flushes this kind of love out in 1 John 4:7-12 let me read it for us...

If we want to live in the light than we must accept the reality that love comes from God alone and that christ's death and resurrection were the fullest expression of Gods love for us. If we buy into this radical and transformational story and accept it into our lives we are called to love each other wholly and completely even when we are hurt, or angry or frustrated.

Communion is a time where we get to display this love in a physical way. Before we take communion let us ask ourselves if we are seeing God's transformational love in the details of our lives and within our church body or are we lost in hopelessness and despair?

Let us reflect on whether we are living in the light or in the dark before we participate in the holy act of communion.

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Have you ever been to the desert? It's hot there during the day and very cold during the night. It's a variety of extreme conditions. You would not want to get stuck out in the desert. In Christian spirituality the desert image has strong historical roots. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years seeking solace and reconciliation as they waited as they waited to enter the promiseland. Jesus himself went out into the "wilderness" for forty days and forty nights. In history we can see desert father and mothers who deserted the world and went to seek the holiness of solitude and sand using Jesus as their example. We have writings from many of these men and women who had to get out of the world to save their own souls. Now a days the desert imagery is used to describe wilderness spirituality. The desert is the place where your soul is dry and where you

2011-09-16T06:56:00.001-07:00

Have you ever been to the desert? It's hot there during the day and very cold during the night. It's a variety of extreme conditions. You would not want to get stuck out in the desert. In Christian spirituality the desert image has strong historical roots. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years seeking solace and reconciliation as they waited as they waited to enter the promiseland. Jesus himself went out into the "wilderness" for forty days and forty nights. In history we can see desert father and mothers who deserted the world and went to seek the holiness of solitude and sand using Jesus as their example. We have writings from many of these men and women who had to get out of the world to save their own souls. Now a days the desert imagery is used to describe wilderness spirituality. The desert is the place where your soul is dry and where you
wander and wonder and feel like God is very far away. This is where I have lived for the last three years.

I got married. I moved to southern Illinois. I became a preacher's wife. I grew into an adult. I got a full time job and then I quit. I went back to get my Masters degree.

All of this happened and I feel like I am still wandering around in the desert with bare feet. I have definitely continued to make decisions but I am not sure about any of them. I feel like my heart is no longer unified.

I am torn between the spiritual responsibility of where I am and who I am around with the knowledge of knowing I am called to do ministry full time in a vocational setting.

While I have been hanging out in the desert I have started to cultivate my some discipline. If you were trapped in the desert you wouldn't drink all your water at once, you wouldn't waste your energy walking around in the middle of the afternoon when the sun is the hottest. You would die if you wasted your energy and resources while stranded in the desert.

That is why I have started cultivating disciplines. I really don't want my soul to perish because I wasted my energy climbing up a sand dune of conflict that produced no results or change. I want to keep my cultivation in practice so that when I get to a place of rich greenery I can enjoy the beauty of the place. I do not want to get caught up in the beauty and in the belief that i created the beauty with my great leadership or righteous spirituality. I am cultivating now so wherever I am led I can try and see and hear the Creator. The one who has led me and the one who has been with me, and the one who is good.

While I wait for the green, cool, wet grass under my blistered bloody feet I will continue to practice the discipline of cultivation. While I sit in the desert and wait for the hottest part of the day to pass I cling to Romans 8:26-28.

God is still moving and breathing and living. I get to be in a place where God has taught me humility, discipline, and gratitude.

What are you learning in the desert?

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2011-08-14T18:34:00.001-07:00

"Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol" Stanley Hauerwas

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Choice

2011-05-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

My first semester of Seminary has been enlightening and discouraging. I have heard many things that I have come to disagree with theologically, which has led me on a theological journey. Trying to ask questions that no one seems to be able to answer, like;

Why are heaven and hell so crucial to our salvation? If neither existed would we still seek Christ?

Is the Bible supposed to be contextual? Is that is why there are so many contradictions within scripture?

Who is this God that we are worshiping? What is his character like?

And can we even verbally, physically, and psychologically know him?

Is baptism truly crucial to salvation?

Because of new brain research the soul does not really exist in a separate sense, do we have to go back and re-translate scripture?

Through our own Biblical translation how much of the message do we truly lose?

Can we actually know anything outside of our own context? And if we cannot does history matter?

What happens when the lamp stand of a church is taken away?

Why is the Restoration movement so disoriented and disconnected?

Is communion truly necessary to remember Christ? Can't we remember him through wearing a cross or saying a prayer? If there is no power in communion, if it is just a memorial, what's the point of doing it every week?

Why are there some Christians who actively work at their salvation with fear and trembling, and there are others who settle for a clean morality?

Why do we let historical examples of theological subjects determine our now moments?

In Evangelical Protestantism who is our Hermeneutical Pope or Magisterial Authority?

These questions have led me to question the very foundational theology that forms the restoration denomination. These questions have also led me to seek out different streams of Christianity. As I have been pondering whether to stay within the restoration movement I have been led to a choice. A choice whether to stay or go. A choice to leave my foundation, my home, my brothers and sisters, my mentors, and strike on a new journey.

As I have been sitting in class this morning the topic of church membership came up. My professor was addressing my generations abhorrence of membership. He stated that the reason my generation does not make a committed decision in any aspect of life is because we want to have our cake and eat it too. We do not want to make a public committed decision to a person, or a body because we want all of our options open. We want a quick escape. However, we also want the benefits of church membership, or marriage, or a specific career. We, as a generation, are so fearful of making the wrong choice, that we do not make a choice at all. In this sad decision we become shallow, impatient, and ungracious people. We can not stand another person's belief system because we are so insecure of our own.

However, being apart of this generation I understand this feeling. There is such a weight to be a great or powerful or wonderful person, that to just be ordinary is terrifying. I understand this feeling and I have lived through giving this feeling up.

While it was not easy to give up this 'great responsibility' I have been able to see that to be ordinary is deepening. To accept your ordinariness is life changing. This ordinariness frees you to be yourself, instead of someone you can never be. When you give up the illusion of grandeur, you find yourself on the other side, living.

A year ago I would be terrified to leave the Restoration movement. I would have felt that I was 'called' to be a trailblazer, or a wonderful author, or a great preacher.

However, God has only called me to follow him. He does not require me to save the world, or to make a wonderful contribution or to do great, powerful things. He only requires me to follow. To follow in my ordinariness.

Through my questioning I have been led to make a choice. And through my ordinariness I am free to make the choice. And through the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, I have been set free.

Prayer

2011-05-03T07:31:00.001-07:00

I think I have become more fearful as I have gotten older. I think of things more and I have become more concerned with my own morality and the morality of others. I think Satan uses these thoughts to cause worry and the need to control. I think the mind is a fun playground for Satan, because I truly believe that more than not we as human beings, are not aware of our own thinking.

I believe that is the reason we are called to pray. Often times prayer is looked at as a tool to communicate our needs to God. During my time growing up within the restoration movement I have not seen a deep understanding of prayer. I have noticed within the restoration movement, that prayer is an emotional response to God's work, or to human despair. Prayer is driven by our emotions rather than by our
minds.

While in high school my home church gave out journals along with yearly scripture plans to encourage Biblical reading. I began to write my prayers out. While my emotions still drove my prayer life, my journal helped me become a disciplined prayer.

When I met Waylon we would go to his home church in Central Illinois occasionally and I was told in a Sunday school class that you could not write your prayers out, because written prayers are not Biblical. The Sunday school teacher must have not gotten around to studying the book of Psalms. I had always wondered if my written prayers were being heard.

As I have gotten out of college and I have started becoming an adult I have lost my prayer writing. I have gotten out of the discipline of writing my prayers down. However, I have become more aware of the complexity of prayer and how it is a holistic response to God, rather than just an emotional response. I pray more deeply than I have prayed before, and often times I don't use words to do it.

However, I see the reality of prayer being a lifestyle choice that scripture gives us to help submit our minds to Jesus. I think that is why Jesus' form of prayer is so focused on God and his providence rather than on our own emotional insecurities and problems.

I truly believe that prayer is more about our minds becoming disciplined and submissive to the Spirit rather than anything else. Prayer allows the Spirit to convict our mental sins and gives the Spirit a chance to protect us from Satan's sneaky attacks.

When we are not self aware of our own challenges and our own sin we become a victim to Satan and his attacks and our mental sin seeps into the rest of our spirituality like a cancer. As I allow my negative thoughts to run rampant I find when I prayer and encompass my mind on God I find a peace that overcomes all my worry and anxiety. Just as we train our bodies and our emotions, we must also train our minds to preach and represent the Gospel.

Good Friday

2011-04-26T05:42:00.000-07:00

In Southern Illinois we have been having Thunderstorms for about a week and a half. I am usually a large proponent of thunderstorms, but I don't think I actually experienced t-storms like the ones we have been getting. Usually these storms will come in and storm for about an hour and then move on. These storms have come and come and come.

On Good Friday it stormed all night. The Thunder was shaking the house, the wind was ghostly, and the lightning light the house up when the power went out. As I was lying in bed and listening to this storm I thought of the cross. I reflected on the feeling of the cross as sleep evaded me.

While the cross was interrupted human history, we often forget that all of Creation was influenced by the cross. As I was lying in bed I was thinking of the moments after Christ's last breath. In Matthew the scene is mind altering. The earth and the rocks shake, and the dead bodies that have been within the earth are resurrected and walk, or float themselves, into the city.

None of the other Gospels speak of the natural implications of the Cross. Matthew is the only writer that mentions the natural reaction to the death of Christ. As the thunder was knocking on my roof I was reminded of the all encompassing redemption that was intended for the world.

Psalm 22

2011-04-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

My husband and I went up to his folks for Easter on Sunday. After church we drove up to Shelbyville, Illinois and spent some time with his family. Monday I had a meeting with my Seminary adviser in regards to my vocational endeavors. Before I met with him we went through Decatur and saw an old friend who I had interned with my Senior year of college. We spoke of our passion for the church and the challenges that we all were facing. It was very encouraging to see a brother in Christ. As we were leaving Dan hugged me and told me "Don't lose your faith!"

After my meeting we caught up with a college professor who was very influential in my husband's life. We sat and talked with him for a couple of hours about our losses and our wins within ministry. As we left he continued to say, 'pray and God will answer your prayers, be encouraged, be faithful'.

Through our rich conversations we were reminded that we are not alone in this work. We were reminded that God had worked within the lives of these men in their past ministries and He was continuing to work.

These Christian fathers encouraged us to keep the faith, and to continue to seek God, and to continue to study, and to continue to serve. Through their lives, they had seen God do wonderful things, and they continued to believe that God was still at work.

These catch up conversations reminded me of Psalm 22. Waylon preached on Psalm 22 on Sunday in reflection of the resurrection. Psalm 22 was written by David and has some prophetic inkling to the crucifixion of Christ. The first verse in the Psalm is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This famous statement that Jesus makes on the Cross was not a question driven by Theodicy, but rather was a prayer. Jesus was praying Psalm 22 on the cross.

Psalm 22 is a Psalm written by David within his despair. David is feeling abandoned and alone. Not only is David feeling this way about his God, he is also feeling this way about his community. As the Psalm goes on he is describing in detail, his spiritual and physical despair.

David is longing for deliverance, and God is no where to be seen.

However, even though God is not immediately delivering David, David still remembers the presence of God within his people's history. David remembers the deliverance God provides his people from the Egyptians. David remembers that God has been ever present within David's own life. As David is wallowing in his despair he is continually encouraged, because as God delivered his chosen people within the past, David can trust that God will continue to deliver him in the future.

As God has worked his redemption out within our history, he will continue to work his redemption out within our future.

Even when God does not deliver us in our present despair, we can trust that God will continue to deliver us within the future.

Jesus prays this Psalm on the cross. While, Jesus is in utter despair, he knows the plan. Because of Jesus' humanity the despair is very real and very painful, however, because Jesus is fully divine, he knows that deliverance will be given to all humanity through his Resurrection.

Just as my older brothers in Christ can look back on their lives and see the deliverance and redemption of God the father, they can look forward and trust in the ultimate deliverance that was given to us through the cross and resurrection.
This ultimate deliverance will free us entirely to be complete human beings.

Kingdom people will no longer be enslaved by their chains, but will be free in the despair and the deliverance of Christ.

Okay

2011-04-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

So, I am not the best hymn writer. I think I will stick with regular, non rhyming words from now on. I have been doing some writing, some thinking, and some reading, and I have stumbled onto a couple of questions.

What if our presuppositions were cause for a greater Christ? What if our presuppositions led us to a contextual Christ? Is the historical Christ more important than our contextual Christ? Or are they both on equal playing fields?

For example, clearly Christ has not lived in the twenty first century. Now spiritually he has lived through the Spirit, but I am talking about being born, living through the treacherous adolescent years, and eventually dying. Jesus Christ actually lived and died back in the first century. The question I am pondering has to do with the importance of the historical Jesus in regards to our own presuppositions. Most of us did not grow up with an indoctrinated view of the historical Jesus. Most of us grew up in Sunday morning kid's church, learning about the great miracles of Jesus, and about how God love's all the little children of the world, no matter what color you are.

So, we grow up and maybe some of us never come to terms with this 'historical' Jesus. Maybe some of us live in the spiritual world of miracles, and love, and grace, and forgiveness. But, the historical Jesus lived. Thanks to Josephus we know that there was an actual Jesus who was called the Christ.

However, because we cannot time travel out of our own living contexts and into the first century we do not hear Jesus' words first hand and we do not know this living dying, living Jesus.

All that rambled, the question I have is; who is more important to our theology, the historical Jesus or our own contextual Jesus?

Now, this question, from a logical and restored stand point is easy. Everyone who chooses to study the Bible is called to understand the historical implications of scripture. Because a parable about farming within the first century might look and feel different than a Midwestern farming today. However, when we unveil the historical side of scripture, does it really matter. Does that Midwestern farmer in the pulpit say, wow that parable has nothing to do with the drought I am facing with, this scripture really means this....

When we are facing our own despair do the historical implications matter? Let's be honest, we cannot actually 'know' the truest historical situation, without the historian's presuppositions of history anyway, so does this historical Jesus truly matter to our theology? Can we ever get through the layers of everyone's presuppositions to reach a pure, untainted view of Jesus? Or is this historical Jesus a scapegoat for our spiritual apathy? Do we cling to the history behind the text so that we do not truly have to live out the text in our own context?

Hymn 1

2011-03-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been intrigued by hymns. I have decided to write one. Here it is;

We are without words,
Within the presence of your patience
For your patience has taught us to wait within our despair.
To find the hope within our own moments,
Rather to dream and grasp for hope within our own care.

For our future is determined by Christ alone.
For our present is found within our defection.
As our past was determined by Christ atoned.
As our present is cleansed by the Spirit’s direction.

As we pour out our being
To understand each other
We grasp for the false tenderness of our world
to determine our love for one another.

For our future is determined by Christ alone.
For our present is found within our defection.
As our past was determined by Christ atoned.
As our present is cleansed by the Spirit’s direction.

We need the tenderness and the violence of Christ
To rip away the veil from our hearts
So that we may seek ourselves as whole
Rather than in separate and conflicted parts.

Bridge:
Through our human toil
we find our humanity soiled
And we long to find the wholeness
In our broken united closeness

A Listening Ear

2011-03-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

I have been in a very dark place for two years. My soul has been in despair because my insides are broken. My heart, my soul, my spirit, my strength has been broken. When I graduated college my dreams broke which ultimately broke my heart. The identity that I had built for twenty years broke.

I wallowed in my broken identity. I searched the five stages of grief to try and work through my sorrow. I first denied my brokenness by trying to form my ministry around my broken identity. I did this through demanding expectations and judgmental teaching. I was so clouded by denial that I could not see the wound I was creating within the ministry I was given.

I then felt the anger seep into my spirituality and into my life. I took my anger out on my loving husband and my loving God. I blamed my husband for tricking me into marrying him and for making me move away from everyone I knew and loved. I felt betrayed and angry because it was his fault for my broken identity. I blamed my loving God by calling him indifferent and uninvolved. I did not believe that a "loving" God would put me in such a despairing place. How could my God betray me! How could this God place me in such a miserable place?

I then bargained for my old identity back. I told God that I would do anything if he would free me from my own broken despair. I tried to get God to release me from my despair. I no longer cared about my ministry or about my gifts. I wanted to be free from this ache within my own soul. I longed to feel loved again, I longed to feel anything other than the despair that was with me at all times. I wanted to be free of the responsibility of growing and the responsibility of being a Christ follower. I bargained with God and pleaded with God to set me free from this life of burden. I just wanted my brokenness and I wanted to be left alone in my brokenness. I longed to sit in my self pity and my despair and be left completely alone. I tried to get God to let me live my broken life in exchange for my surrender.

Then I realized that my bargaining was not going to work. God was not going to let me live in my own dying brokenness. God wanted me to accept my broken identity and to move to a new place of completion. I refused to accept my brokenness and I sank into a deep depression. I so craved to die in my own brokenness. I carried this depression in every single part of my life. I came home from work and crawled into bed and wept. I wept my own death. I wept my brokenness and misunderstandings. I wept for my husband who was speechless. The forming of my depression has lasted two years. It officially ended my first day of seminary.

I have finally accepted and repented of my brokenness. I have repented of my longing to be put to death along with my broken identity. I have finally come to accept the "loving" God that I had so resented. This loving God longs for me to feel the freedom of completion rather than the death of slavery. This freedom has brought me into a deep humility. A humility that is now shaping how I listen to God and to everyone around me. A humility that I pray never abandons my heart because it has opened my ears up to the Good news.

2011-02-11T07:50:00.001-08:00

I am tired of the restoration movement.

Holy Mourning

2011-01-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

Living in a social networking world I think it is interesting that mourning continues to be a private matter. For the most part people don't know how to interact with mourners. The setting is akward and unfriendly. While working at DMH and even at UMCH I dealt with mourning in different settings. The first of course was in a hospital setting. Mourning happened and as an intern I glimpsed into the sadness of the world. Unfortunatley I carried that sadness around with me. Wondering when the last hug would be or the last meaningful conversation. I was not good at seperating myself from the grief.

At UMCH I worked with a different type of mourner. Since I was working with emotionally sick teenagers the mourning was more like a living state of being. These kids were stuck in a stage of mourning. Mourning their lives because they wern't 'normal'. Mourning because their mom's and dad's abandoned then, abused them, or ignored them.

As I was reading Winner's chapter on the discipline of mourning I found myself opening this discipline to all kinds of mourning. Mourning a lost job, a lost dream, a lost faith, a lost role, a lost identity. Winner recognizes that mourning is not a strong point of the modern day church.

The church is bad at mourning because, "while you the mourner are still bawling your eyes out and slamming fists into the wall, everyone else, understandably, forgets and goes back to their normal lives and you find, that you are left alone. You are without the church, and without a church vocabulary for what happens to the living after the dead are dead."(27-28).

The church has never dealt with mourning. Part of it is the way the church is structured. I know that our church has a commitee to organize funeral dinners, but beyond that, we are unequipped to deal with mourning. We don't have a follow up program, or a team of people who attends to the mourner.

The Jewish people were intentional about their mourning. While the mourner was struck by the shock of their family members death, the community came in and took care of everything. Everything seems intentional, even the mourner's process of grief. The mourner's "neighbors bring food. At the first meal after the funeral-called the seudat havra'ah, of the meal of recovery-the mourner is meant to eat an egg, whose obvious circular fertility is to begin the slow work of reminding the bereaved that she will live."(30)

The Jewish mourner has a calender which they stick too. The first week, the first month, and the first year. All these times are intentional for the mourner as they continue to seperate themselves from their loss and back into a more ordinary routine of life.

Through this year the mourner is required to say the Kaddish twice a day. The mourner cannot say this prayer alone, he/she has to be within the community.

The prayer is this, "Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, unpraised, and lauded be the Name of the Holy One, Blessed is He, beyond any blessing or song."

The mourner is called to do the Kaddish so that "even in the pit, even in depression and loss and nonsense, still we respond to God with praise. This is not to say that the mourner should not feel what he feels-anger, disbelief, hatred. He can feel those things (and shout them out to God; God can take it). You do not have to feel praise int he intense moments of mourning, but the praise is still true, and insisting upon it over and over twice a day every day, ensures that eventually you will come to remember the truth of those praises."(36)

The church can learn a lesson or two from the Jewish discipline of mourning. We can start being more involved in the loss of our Christian brother's and sisters. We can start to admit that the loss of a person, a job, an idenity, a role, or a relationship can truly damage a person's faith. We can start being the community that can take a damaged person and help them find healing.

Let us not let the akwardness of pain and grief come between our love for the church.

Creation Returned

2011-01-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

"'What happens when we stop working and controlling nature?" Moishe Konigsberg responds. "When we don't operate machines, or pick flowers, or pluck fish from the sea?...When we cease interfering in the world we acknowledge that it is God's world.'" (6-7)

I love this imagery. When we stop working, playing, eating, we become to a still sense that we are not alone. I found this when I worked for Decatur Memorial Hospital and Hospice. I would walk into patient's rooms and find a uneasy silence. Through being sick these people were required to stop. Stop working, stop eating, stop fighting, stop driving, stop everything that was ordinary in their lives. They were found dependant on other people where they had the chance to sit in stillness and review their lives thus far.

Whenever I visited hospice patients I found storytelling. My first visit was with an elderly women who lived in a assisted living community. She came to tell me her life story. Who she was married to, who her children were, how they came and visited for Christmas, who took care of her, where she used to live, what she used to do, how she used to serve within the church. This woman's struggle with the church was herself. She could no longer serve, take communion, attend weekly worship meetings. She felt her faith had teetered and was fading.

I found this need to tell stories was great within all hospice patients. The more you inquired the deeper the story went.

The first discipline that Winner discusses is keeping the discipline of keeping the Sabbath. Sabbath keeping was not a part of my upbringing. Actually 75% of my family was active on Sunday mornings within the worship band and by the time Sunday afternoon we were all exhausted. I heard about Sabbath keeping in college but I was in college. Discipline was not necessarliy on the top of the list, even though it should have been.

While reading this first chapter I kept coming back to creation. As Christians we are not required to keep Sabbath. We are not even commanded to keep Sabbath. However, when we choose to let our time point our lives to Jesus we have found Sabbath.

My preaching professor said it best, "Get to your calenders first." Often times we find we have no time for new things, like excercise, friendly dinners, family time, or date night. I think that is because we let our calenders ruin our lives. We forget to surrender our time to Christ. And the best part is that we don't even have to make up some new trendy way to surrender our calenders; the Sabbath!

The reason that we surrender our time is not so that we can be more productive or so that we can rest from our crazy schedules, but so we can recognize our stories within the Kingdom. We can have a chance at reflecting on God and who he is and what he has done. We have the chance to stop creating, to stop worrying, to stop consuming, and to start reflecting on creation and resurrection. We shouldn't wait until we are at the end our of our lives to recall and reflect. We shouldn't have to be forced into a stillness through sickness or loss to find our time is important and is fleeting.

As Christian we are called to live radically different than the world. Why don't we start with surrendering our time to Christ?

Mudhouse Sabbath

2011-01-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

One of my Old Testament professors recommended Mudhouse Sabbath my Junior year of college. I went to the bookstore and only found it on c.d. So I passed. Well about a month ago Waylon and I were in Barnes and Noble. We go there and walk around, even though we know that we can get any book for half the price on amazon. What can I say, we like the smell of new books.

While we were walking down the Christian spirituality section, I saw mudhouse sabbath. I was so suprised to see it in Barnes and Noble and I had to snatch it up. I started reading it while we were waiting on frieds at a restraunt and felt my soul stir.

The author, Lauren f. Winner, is a Jewish woman who converted to Christianity. The book is about 11 Jewish disciplilnes that she considers valuable for the Christian life. The introduction fascinated me, because she considers discipline essential to the Christian life.

Growing up I enjoyed lovely, and emotionally driven mountain top experiences. I felt on top of the world. I usually found these mountain top experiences at church camp, or at an emotional church service. I lived, and still live a chaotic, messy, and unorganized life. I would feel great for about a day and a half and then doubt would creep into my life. These days of doubt would be enforced by my own insecurities. Even now, as I have been making conversion decisions to follow Christ, I have had my doubts. I was called to quit my job and go back to school, and in that decision, I have worried about money, transportation, whether I am making the 'right' decision.

However, when I finally make the decision I feel wonderful. I actually did feel wonderful for about a week. I was on the Mountaintop! In that week I decided to go back the gym, to develop a discipline for excercise, housecleaning, and eating right. I also made a pact to myself to be a good wife, whatever that means. I felt wonderful. I felt like I could conquer the world and that Satan would fall beneath my 'oh so righteous' feet.

Then Saturday came, and I fell into a weepy mess. The reason I like Winner's introduction is because she finds "mostly [spritual practice/discipline] is about training so that you'll know the moutaintop for what it is when you get there."(xi)

I have always thought spiritual disciipline was for the wilderness times. The times when you feel lonley, desperate, in doubt, and full of insecurity. I figured if you could discipline yourself in those times that the mountaintop experiences would just be a break from your grueling disciplined life. Like going out for cake when you have good news. Or treating yourself to some new clothes when you get some money in the mail from a relative.

I just figured the mountaintop experience would be a chance for a bit of freedom from the discplined life. I have found however, that the disciplined life is supposed to be a life of freedom. We are called to followw Christ, to carry our cross towards our own death. We are called to a life of freedom from death and sin!!!!!

But, how can we even pick up our cross if we do not recognize what we are enslaved to? Discpline allows us to uncover our wonderful impulses. It allows us to find what we are addicted to and how to stop our addictions. It gives us the choice. The choice whether to eat the cake or not. The choice to spend the money or not. The choice to stay silent or to speak.

Discipline finds our sin and allows us to choose who to follow. Do we follow our impulses or do we follow our Lord?

And as I have grown, and gotten older, I have found a discpline for almost everything. Just as I have been reading in the Mudhouse Sabbath, there is a discipline for rest, a discpline for grieving, a discipline for body, for food, for spending money, for suffering, for speaking and staying silent. Wherever you start your discpline life you will not be disappointed when the Holy Spirit uses the practice to uncover more sin within your heart.

So, when I am atop the moutnain, I can feel free knowing that when I descend back into the lonley pits of misery I will be free.

Understanding Eternity

2011-01-06T08:26:00.000-08:00

I have found Facebook extremely boring. I actually made a post about it the other day. There are just too many people, half of which I don't remember. But, today I got on facebook and started to look at pictures of families that made a huge investment in my life throughout the years. I looked at pictures of the communities they are involved in with now and how they are continuing to live within the Kingdom of God.

As I continued to look at pictures it would be very easy for me to get depressed and say, well how lonely am I know, I don't feel like I have community like that, I don't know of anyone who knows me like that anymore. But how can I get depressed when I see pictures of small groups, worship settings, and people feeling the impression of Christ. These families that have made an impression on me are continuing to make impressions of Christ on the people that they are surrounded by. Even though life has so drastically changed, these families have continued to run the race of perserverance.

They have not let change, death, sadness, frustration, or anger overcome their love for Christ. While these fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters have gone to college, moved, started new churches, they are still influencing and making an impression on me. I come to find a glimpse of eternity in these pictures because I see the Kingdom living. I don't have to feel sad or loneley because I get to spend eternity with these wonderful people.

I get a glimpse of understanding an eterninty that isn't boring, it is full of personalities, wisdom, love, and care. Eternity is not going to be a place where we have to sing all the time, and where we have to do it a certian way every week. Eternity is going to be full of people and that is the best kind of Eternity!

2010-11-27T07:29:00.000-08:00

"A saint is a person who practices the keystone human virtue of humility. Humility in the face of wealth and plenty, humility in the face of hatred and violence, humility in the face of strength, humility in the face of your own genius or lack of it, humility in the face of another's humility, humility in the face of love and beauty, humility in the face of pain and death. Saints are driven to humbling themselves before all the splendor and horrow of the world because they perceive there to be something divine in it, something pulsing and alive beneath the hard dead surface of material things, something inconceivably greater and purer than they". Father Joe, Tony Hendra

Since I have graduated college I have been privy to two aspects of God. The aspect of compassion and the aspect of humility are the two attributes I have been immersed in.

I asked for humility and I have been reiceving my dose every day for the last eighteen months. As I right this I feel that the humility I have experienced cannot be conveyed in words, and I worry that I am inflating my own storry to fan my pride. I pray that this is not the case. God has given me every day to get up and serve. To take on a life of humilty. But, these lessons don't start with action. I feel my heart has been torn apart and molded back together by experiencing the deep unending love of Christ. I have worked alongside of coal miners, housewives, teachers, insurance salesmen, pedaphiles, theifs, and rapists. I have talked with blunt racists and silent gossipers. Through my interactions with these many people I have been able to confront my own sin, my own dillusion, and my own pride.

I have been able to see the love of Christ for what it is, and not for what we have all made it out to be.

And that is where the compassion of Christ has seeped into my heart and into my mind. I have been shown my own short comings in serving other people and have been given the opportunity to keep my judgements to myself. While, this is not always the case, and I am often found in fault for judging, I have gotten soft. My heart has less ridges on it's edges. I cry more than I rage. I feel pity for the lost rather than feeling enraged by their ignorance. I pray more than I talk. I find myself longing and craving for silence.

I do not long to be a saint, or anything else for that matter. I long to see the divine in this world. To touch, feel, taste, and smell the love of Christ for all of humanity. I long to follow the Spirit on day at a time.

And I pray I can stop worrying, stop strategizing, and stop fussing over the Gospel, and I can start immersing my life in the stories and scriptures of Jesus. I pray the compassion and humility I have been dragged through can be a powerful witness of the transforming power of the Trinity. And I pray that the humility that I face on a daily basis can be evidence of the Divine in both pain and beauty.

2010-06-08T06:22:00.001-07:00

All of my days. I have been searching all of my days.

I have recently been newly employed. I work at the United Methodist Children's Home. I started three weeks ago and I have been immersed in a culture that is shocking. This culture is riddled with sin and sorrow and seems to be hidden from the rest of the world.

I help teach broken children. Almost a year ago I was working with the sick and the dying, those who are at the end of their journey. I worked with the widows of the world as they were dealing the death of their loved spouse.

Now I am working with the orphans of this world. Those who are broken and almost beyond repair. On the surface these children are a waste of time. They are the future criminals of this world. They are medicated, they go to therapy, they live in a structured environment and they still are out of control. Living off their impulses and learning from their other radical peers. If they cannot function well in this setting they are sure to fail in the world that dwells outside of the campus.

That is one perspective that easy to adopt. It is a perspective that dehumanizes these children and allows for the institution of law and of normalcy to reign supreme. This perspective is driven by fear and misunderstanding. I can understand this perspective to a point because the first week I worked there I was extremely intimidated by the outbursts, the rage, the profanity, the threats, and the violence.

I could easily say that the reason why those reactions don't effect me anymore is because I have become immune to them. That opinion would be false. I am still shocked by the behavior, however, I have learned more of the why behind the impulses and the rage. These kids are a product of a culture that never really cared for them in the first place.

These children were unwanted and were treated in such a way that showed them in every way that they were unwanted. When a young formidable child is treated with such absurdity it is understandable that these children act in this absurdity. It is understandable that these children feel in this absurdity. It is understandable that these children think in this absurdity. It is understandable that these children are a product of the absurdity of those who were called to parent them.

So, the question then comes.

Do we treat these children with the respect they never received or do we let them live in the Darwinist society that we are all immune too? Do we care for these human beings even when they cannot care for themselves, and many of them will never truly be a productive member of our humanistic society.

Well if we follow the world's guidelines for care and consideration we would probably disregard these kinds of people. Yes, of course their will always be the moral decision of making sure these kinds of people are taken care of to a point. Though that system falls of it's face if there is no value on these children. There needs to be some kind of value given to the people and the world cannot truly give value, for it did not create itself.

The value that must be found needs to be found in their image. These children have been made in the image of God. They were created for the capacity for completion. If we give up on these children, we give up on their creator. If we let these children live in the margins, we let their creator live in the margins. If we let these children suffer the consequences of our sinful world view then we let their creator suffer the consequences of our sinful world view.

If we pass these children by then what is the point of the Good News that is supposed to save those who need it the most?

Joan of Arc

2010-02-26T15:01:00.000-08:00

I must be honest. I really don't know anything about French history. I blame some of this ignorance on my American education and I blame some of my ignorance on my apathetic attitude towards the French culture. I don't exactly know where I adopted such a sad stance on the French, but i confess my sin in an effort to redeem my new interest.

The first saint that James Martin discusses in his book is Joan of Arc, who was not only French, but was a great French military leader. Her story starts as a young girl who hears the voices of three saints. These three saints instructed Joan to save France. Through a series of events the French military, Joan of Arc and the three saints accompanying her, went into action against the English. After a couple of successful battles the French decided that they weren't in need of their living saint and let her get captured by the Burgundian army who sold her to the English. The French's apathy for their young prophet led her to a death fit more for a witch than for a saint. The church that she revered sent her off to her death as a heretic.

All in all Joan's life looks a lot like many of the lives that have followed God rather than the cultural and theological expectations of the church. A life that is marked by the fingerprints of the Holy Spirit rather than the finger prints of current culture or theology.

It brings me to ask the question; if we are all following the Holy Spirit with our heart, mind, soul, and strength are we more apt to look like contemporary culture or theology? And if we are not looking like contemporary culture and theology what is the good of it all?

Joan of Arc was culturally and theologically contradictory for her time. I don't know much about the culture back then, but I do know that a woman who refused to dress in a man's clothing would have been completely misunderstood. Not only would she have been misunderstood, but would have been considered a heretic by the church's standard. We certainly wouldn't call her a heretic within the restoration movement but she wouldn't have been looked upon with affection.

Joan wasn't different. Joan was following what God wanted and she was confident in that way of life. Joan trusted in the Lord. Whether you believe in saints, or whether you despise Catholics like so many protestants do, you have to admit that Joan was a real tangible example of faith. You may not believe in her story, but to look at the person of Joan you have to admit she believed in it.

James Martin recognizes that, "Joan found her way to God by learning a language that no one else could hear, and so she is the perfect model for someone on the beginning of a faith journey" (26). I would only add that I think Joan is also the perfect model for someone on the middle and the end of a faith journey as well.

My Life with the Saints

2010-02-24T15:02:00.000-08:00

I have been wordless for over eight or nine months now. Every time I sit down to write I find myself writing nonsense. Most writers would say that I should continue to write the nonsense because I will eventually break through to the good writing. Well, after nine months of nonsense I have decided to give it up and read. Usually when I am not writing I like to read. I guess I would consider myself a reactionary writer because I tend to write in regards to something I have read or heard. I think this is the reason why I have not been writing anything of substance, because I simply have not been reading anything worth reacting too.

In June I started reading Stephen King. I also dabbled into the Boleyn books, but when I read the second in the series it tended to look and sound a lot like the first book of the series, so I gave it up. However, Stephen King captured me. I read The Stand, The Bachman series, The Black House, and started listening to the Dark Tower Series on tape. Sometime within the month of December I lost interest in King. Which is ironic because Waylon got me four more of his books for Christmas. I labored through Insomnia and half of Under the Dome and gave up.

All to say this, I have not found a spiritually refreshing book in quite a while. I have also not found a spiritually challenging book in quite a while. I think part of me has not wanted to read those kinds of books and part of me has not found any to read. It almost frustrates me that I have already read all the famous authors at Barnes and Noble, because now I really have to scrounge around on Amazon to find something to read. With all this said I am here to announce the book that I actually did find in Barnes and Noble, which is both spiritually refreshing and spiritually challenging. It is called My Life with the Saints, and it is written by James Martin, SJ.

I was drawn to this book a couple of months ago but I didn't have the funds to purchase it. Waylon and I went to B&N as part of our Valentines Day and I picked the book up and was walking to the register and then put it down on a stand of clearance Christmas cards. Waylon was looking at journals. I opened the first page and saw someone comment about how much the author writes like Merton and I was sold. I left for my trip to Naperville and started reading. The first two chapters captured me. The second chapter actually left me completely convicted and I knew that the Holy Spirit directed my to buy this book. Over the next couple of weeks I will travel with the author as he undresses his interaction with these men and women of the past. I will write on whether the Christian Church should take sainthood more seriously and why it is important to look at other parts of Christianity as well as other parts of religion to deepen our faith. I will also share with you my honest reactions and convictions from my readings.

I hope you will travel with me on this journey. I hope the blessing I have received in this book will bless and challenge you as well.

A New Hospitality Code

2009-12-10T07:37:00.001-08:00

My small group and I have been going through the book of Luke. I picked Luke because I had never really delved into that Gospel before. Actually I don't think I had ever read the book of Luke straight through before. I think partly I have never read Luke all the way through is because it seems like a forgotten Gospel. Matthew has the sermon on the mount, Mark is full of action and John is the Gospel concerned most with the Holy Spirit. Luke seemed to be overshadowed within the rest of the Gospels but what I have found within the book has truly amazed me.

I am going through the tenth chapter of Luke this week and the contrast between those who welcome the disciples and those who reject the disciples is clear as a warm spring day. Jesus starts of with a pep talk to the disciples before he sends them out. He basically tells them that those who welcome you are giving you the gift of hospitality. Those who welcome you are following the hospitality code from the days of the Old Testament. Those who welcome you still have a grasp on what the people of Israel could and should look like. Jesus also warns them of those who will reject the disciples. Those people who have lost the importance of who the people of Israel are called to become. Those people who are more concerned with proving a political point rather than helping a brother or sister in need. Those people who just are apathetic towards their neighbors.

The climax of this speech and of the hospitality code within the Jewish world is verse sixteen. Jesus culminates this Old Testament law and tradition and centers himself within it. He states that if anyone is accepted within the people of God then he is accepted and if anyone is rejected he is rejected.

Jesus then goes on and talks about the Good Samaritan. He is using one of the most unclean people to demonstrate this new hospitality. Jesus is ripping the scab off the hatred of the Jews towards the Samaritans and is using that hatred to teach them about the Kingdom.

Looking at this scripture, I see that our discriminations, our hatreds, our bleeding scabs should be surrendered to this new code of hospitality. That when we are hating our brother, when we are ignoring our brother, when we are degrading our brother, we are hating, ignoring and degrading Christ.

2009-09-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

When she sits behind the wheel of her white pickup truck the world seems livable. When she looks out the window she sees the beauty of an uninterrupted creation. A creation that has no faults or errors. However, when she starts driving her pickup down the highway at a mere fifty miles an hour, she starts to see the side- effects of a lost and alluded reality. She drives over road kill, gets honked at for going too slow, and even feels the anger rise up in her heart as someone cuts her off.

Living faith is a lot like driving a pickup truck. The first time you get behind the wheel you have a sense of excitement and wonder. You feel a certian amount of freedom from your old life of asking for rides to your new life of independence. There is a sense of excitment and sense of legalism when a person enters into the faith. We throw away all of our "bad" c.d.'s. We burn all our "bad" books, we throw out all our "bad movies" and we live in a world of compete abstinance. We don't cuss, drink, spit on the floor. We become perfect moral beings.

We live in a moral perfection until we get hurt by another christian, or until we are confronted by a situation where morals don't apply.

Our perfect morality that starts our faith journey off suddenley comes to a hault as we realize that Jesus didn't come and die so that we could be good, neat, moral beings.

When we find ourselves living by our own moral standards we find ourselves treating our faith cheaply. The reason I say this is because when we balance our own lives on the thread of morality we are living in the shallow end of the pool. We have created our own personal law and that at times becomes an idol. The church often gets focused on doing. The church often gets focused on saying. If we do and say then we will achieve our salvation. If we serve the church until our fingers fall off and if we say that we are christians until we loose our voice we still are not grasping the reality of faith. Doing and saying are wonderful venues of showing people the Gospel. But they are not the foundation of our faith.

Our faith cannot be morality, or actions, or words.

Our faith is believing the story and living it out. Not just teaching the story, or praying the story, or moralizing the story, or acting the story, but actually believing the story.

When we believe the story we seek to holistically represent the Gospel in our human existence.

Our faith will bind our divided parts. Our faith will be a catalyst and a sustaining reality in bringing us into completion through Jesus.

But, we first have to believe in the story.

Sunday School

2009-09-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

"God blesses those who mourn,

for they will be comforted."
Matthew 5:4

Don't take scripture for granted. Scripture will reach you in your humanity when you decide to soak your life in it. I have decided to teach the sermon on the mount to my Sunday School class. I have a group of young women who have been in church together since they were little.

The Sermon on the Mount was meant for the kingdom people to digest. Jesus is teaching with an expectation for people to wet their appetite and to devour his words with an absolute hunger. He is not teaching to a group of people who are going to walk away and forget his words. He is not teaching to luke warm people. Jesus is teaching to a group of men who will be rembered for living out these words, throughout their lives and throughout their deaths.

I was studying the beatitudes because it will be the first section of scripture that I teach. While I was reading the mourning verse caught my eye. Blessed are those who mourn. This seems so odd at first. When I think of mourn I think of someone mourning the loss of a family memeber, or a friend. This is true to some extent. However, it is a very narrow view point of a mourner.

A mourner is one who mourns the loss. Not necessarily the loss of someone, but just the loss. The loss of a job, the loss of a position, the loss of a name, the loss of a specific identity, the loss of time, the loss of completion.

A mourner is one who despairs in the loss of completion.

It is someone who recognizes the world as a broken place, and cries out in pain. Someone who hides under the covers and cries for the world. Someone who carries a heaviness around for those who are lost. Someone who can love no matter how many wounds they have been pierced with.

Someone like Jesus. A man who cried for the loss of Israel, for the brokeness of Israel.

A mourner is one who despairs in the loss of completion.

This mourner is blessed, and he will be comforted.

This idea of comforted actually is a demonstration of companionship. A demonstration of completion. The mourner is blessed. He is free from his tedious life. He is free from the world's pain. Because of this freedom a disciple can mourn. Because of his freedom a disciple can be comforted.

Without this freedom, without this blessing we all find ourselves in despair. We find ourselves living as a nihilist. However, with this freedom we can mourn the loss of completion, but we can also be comforted because of the glimpse of restoration that will be.

Those who mourn, who hide under the covers on dark days, know that there are glimpses of the wonderful completion that we will all receive.

2009-09-15T19:59:00.000-07:00

"Trace the shape of my heart
Til it becomes more familiar to your eyes"

My walking days.

2009-09-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

I walk almost every day. The practical reason for walking is to get exercise and to give the dogs an opportunity to exercise.

But, do I really do anything that is just practical? I like walking because it gives me an opportunity to create space in my life for God to move. I see things when I walk that I wouldn't normally see while I drive, or even ride my bike.

Some of things I have seen on my walks;
A fox run across the road,
a sunset,
trees that touch the sky,
little children,

I see a lot of things on my walks. But, my walks are also ways where I get to talk with people. I see people around town that attend our church and I get to sit down and talk, or just wave and smile. In a way it is a slight reminder that says, hey, I am in this with you.

Today I was walking and I saw Margie on her front porch reading the newspaper. Margie is our 92 year old door greeter. Every Sunday I ask her how she is doing and she pulls me so that my ear is next to her mouth and tells me that she is mean as ever. On my first meeting of Margie I found out that she sews all her own clothes, she mows her own lawn, and she still drives. She also warned me not to go to the doctor, or to trust lawyers.

Well I have gotten to know Margie over the last month we have lived here and she is a foundation of the Gospel. I sat with her this morning and she gave me the wisdom of her age. She encouraged me to save my money, to settle my disagreements with my husband quickly, to always talk affectionately to my mama and pap.

I also found out today that Margie has lost four sisters, a set of parents, a husband, and a son. She is what our society calls a survivor. This women has experienced the pains and sorrows of life. She has lost much, but she gets out every day. She drives all over the place, visiting our Christian brothers and sisters in the faith who are shut it, hospitalized and reside in nursing homes. She visits with these people and she prays with them all. She is crass and earthy like our good old Anne Lamont, but she has the age to live it out.

I am not trying to romanticize Margie, I am just trying to show that it takes all kinds. Every person, young, and old are called to be faithful. At 92 Margie could have easily given up by now. She has lost almost everyone around her that she cared about. She could sit in her own self pity, but she is a light even now.

We are called to live out our conversion in every decision that we make. Even when we have lost everything. Even when we have gained everything.

Creating Space.

2009-09-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

There is a house across the street from us that reminds me of a modern fairy tale. The house looks too modern to hold any old fairy tale, but I could definitely see a newer tale being spun around the atmosphere. It is a very tall house and it has a castle spiral at the top. The brick has been kept together for a long while. The house has a long fence around it that goes all around the house. There is a garage in the back of it and it has a jeep and a yellow corvette. The grounds of the house contain a very kept up yard with a spiral bush that has been manicured to look just right. The house is also a keeper of an underground pool. It is guarded by a fence, but at night the lights come on around it, and it looks to be very exciting and refreshing.

That is the funny thing about this house. I never see anyone out of the house during the day time. It is like no one actually lives there. However, when the sun comes down there is a family that seems to come out and play on the well kept yard. This is why I think it would be a place for a great tale. I am sure there could be a wonderful story that is kept with the house.

The atmosphere of the house truly cultivates the ground for a good story. For a story that is worth reading.

If the house was a ranch house, or a split level, or even a two story house the story wouldn’t match. Those simple houses are seen everywhere. There is no significance, and no uniqueness behind them. They cultivate good stories, but not stories that change your life. Not stories that refresh your soul.

The church has the ability to do the same thing. They have the ability to create an atmosphere that gives way to a life changing story. The church can truly, and I think has the command to create the atmosphere of life change, through prayer, through scripture, through community, and through story. However, if the church is not creating this atmosphere, the life changing story will get missed in the emotionally charged music, in the good intentions, in the scripture filled service. If we are not living out the story and creating an atmosphere in our own lives, creating space for the Holy Spirit to move, then we will never be able to communicate the life change. We as the church need to stop depending on our church service, we need to stop depending on the alter call to wrap people into the story. We need to individually create the atmosphere for the story to move.

2009-08-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

The best way to make a cake is to make it with a small amount of love. That is actually the best way to make any baked good. Of course most baked goods taste absolutely amazing, but only those make with love have a lasting taste.

So, the next time you make a wonderful dish for someone special add add a little extra love.

Lack of courage.

2009-08-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

Where has the courage gone in the local church? There is no courage or risk left in the local, small town church. All we have left are mirrored images of what was courage and strength. This mirrored image is shallow and it reflects a time that courage was needed for a certain culture. But, that culture has washed away and we are in a new time. A new place that needs a new, fresh, deep courage. This old mirrored courage is lost in the fifties, sixties, even the seventies, but it has no place for today. It has no place in a world where those past issues are past issues. So many people get lost in the issues.

They get lost in their dark passions in the streets and in the alley ways of caution. They would rather keep the individual happy rather than enhance community development. They would rather stink up the local church with despair and stagnancy than jump in the cleansing waters of risk.

These men don’t proclaim the courage they so long for. They do not capture the holiness that could be. They instead let time pass by with the sensitivity of a street whore. They grab you by the collar and tell you secrets, things that will change you if you give of yourself. Then you follow them into the sacred of places and you find cheap, quick, instant gratification. But, nothing that lasts. Nothing worth writing home about. Nothing really worth remembering. And after the short meaningless exchange you find yourself wandering about and wondering what else could be fulfilling, because what you just had was short and silly. You seek longevity. You seek something honorable and pure. Something that is worthy of your time. You seek a wedding night that is holy and worthwhile, unlike the sloppiness you find on the streets.

The church needs to stop losing itself on the streets of the world. The men need to stop throwing such grandiose words around about change and wonder, if all they do is talk. There is no courage in these men, there is no risk. They are short winded, sad tales of men who are mirrored images of what once was. And, when there time passes they will be giving the next generation a lesson of what once was. So, that the courage in these small towns will only be seen by the people who refuse to commit to this half hearted misery.

2009-08-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have never experienced a transition like this before. I have always had a hard time with transitions.

Every new beginning, every new move, every new ending takes a toll on my soul. It is almost like I go through a week or two of despair.

I don't want to get out of bed, I become extremely fatalistic, and I basically become a troll loitering under my own bridge of self pity.

Then I get into a routine and I am fine.

But, this transition was very different. It seems to be that this transition has moved through our lives in such a smooth way.

It's actually quite bizarre.

However, I think i know what has happened.

I think many men and women who find themselves following Christ find themselves in the desert. They find themselves in a dry place, an arid place, a place that almost starves their soul to death.

But in this desert they seem to come across this contemplative peace. This world that is surrounded by inner understanding. Almost and inner rest. But, this rest does not come from any thing or anyone in particular. It comes from the loneliness that they entered into the desert. This loneliness leads them into the desert and it is turned into a contemplative spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit. They find that the loneliness they had for their friends, their families, their school, their old life, has been deserted. They no longer need those things because they have found the ultimate rest in the life of Christ. Even their greatest love is faint in comparison to their life found in Christ.

Everything and everyone seems almost dispensable.

Everyone and everything are Christ's too. That is the biggest comfort. That is where the soul rests. In the reality and the truth of Christ's sovereignty. The lonely person does not have to put her worth, her value, her comfort in the things or people around her, because they will all fade away in time. However, this world and all the people in it are created and formed by Christ and therefore, are His.

I do not have to worry, or lament, or wonder about the people I love, because they have Christ and Christ has them.

CHCH...what's missing? UR

2009-08-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

I have come to realize that their are two existing realities in North America in regards to the church. The first reality is the church plant and the second reality is the small town church. I am choosing to ignore the stereotypes of both of these groups in this blog so that I might be able to connect the two in a healthy way.

When approaching a church planter we will find someone who is a risk taker. Someone who loves people and someone who sees a need in a certain city or town for Jesus to become renewed and relived out. We find the church planters work in teams so that they will be encouraged through the tough process. Often we have church planters who plant in towns where you could easily turn around and spit and hit another church. Church planters use technology and marketing to reach people.

When approaching a small town church we will often find earnest, seeking people who long for their friends, neighbors, and loved ones to get the big picture. We find the pastor who is a scripture teacher, a hospital visitor, and a lone ranger. Often the pastor is lonely and doesn't connect well with the congregation in regards to his own spiritual accountability. Small town churches have history with every church in the town and usually that history is not positive. The small town church is almost always behind the times in regards to technology and marketing.

So, how do we combine these two movements?

I think the reality is that church planting needs to look different in small towns. I think it is necessary and I truly believe if the church in small towns needs church planting or it will shrivel up and die. I also truly believe that the church planting world needs the small town churches or they will lose the humanity behind their movement.

I think we combine these movements by the church planting world recognizing it needs to transform into something different to meet the needs of the small church.

This needs to look like directed and intentional small groups. Small churches attract people from different towns and the church planter needs to capitalize these people and to train them to reproduce small groups in their own towns.

Through this small church have the potential to grow and church planting has the potential to attack a new challenge, and God has a chance to move.

The Move

2009-08-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

My husband and I just moved to Christopher, Il. The church gave us a moving allowance so we decided to rent a Uhaul and buy some Uhaul boxes. My wonderful brother came down to help pack us up and on Monday, August 16th we moved.

When we showed up the previous tenants of the house we were going to rent were still living in the house. So, we stayed with a couple from the church. The next day we got the opportunity to move into our rental home. When we walked in the smell hit us first. It was a mixture of dirt, old cigarette smoke, and putridity. We walked around and noticed the 70's shag carpet, the pink toilet and bath tub and the completely dirty shower floor. Waylon saw it on my face. I was not looking forward to living in this house.

I decided to take my discouraged, disturbed spirit to WalMart to get cleaning supplies. I was cranky and my head hurt. I got the cleaning supplies and headed back to find an army of women and men from the church cleaning our house. What a blessing.

However, I was still hot, as we do not have air conditioning, so after the cleaning, the chemicals, and the unloading, I got sick. I laid on my bed in such a melo-dramatic state and lapped around in my self pity. Oh, poor me.

I made the choice to be thankful for this house. I made the choice to get up and unpack and to start making this house our transitional home.

I made the choice to put pictures on the semi clean walls, to put dishes in the semi clean cabinets, and to wear flip flops. I will not pity the blessing of a place to live.

But, I still had to make the choice, and since I have made the choice I can be content in our stinky house. My eyes have also been opened to the great blessings we have received in the last week.

First blessing; we had help cleaning and unloading our truck. We started at ten and we had the house clean and the truck unloaded by one thirty.

Second blessing; the church came together and bought us food to fill our cabinets.

Third blessing; we are receiving a washer and a dryer on Monday.

Fourth blessing; a wonderful women from the church came and took us out to dinner Tuesday night to the local pizza place.

Fifth blessing; the local pizza place.

Sixth blessing; We drove down the road for a while and found a quaint, Internet free, coffee shop. This is my recent blessing because I love coffee shops and I love coffee!

Seventh blessing; Waylon and I have gotten closer through this move.

Eighth blessing; The church.

So, all in all we have such a sense of peace and contentment in regards to where we are as a couple and as disciples of Christ. I have a hard time following Christ with Waylon, but I feel like God continues to shower us with his living water even when we are in the desert.

The freedom of discipline.

2009-06-20T06:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-05-10T07:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-01-03T18:33:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-01T08:59:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-21T09:44:00.000-08:00

"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.

2008-11-16T19:32:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-12T11:36:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-10-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

Please, go wash.

2008-10-13T20:31:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-13T07:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

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."

2008-09-19T08:03:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-09-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-08-21T20:28:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-08-04T15:58:00.001-07:00

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.

2008-08-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-06-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-04T12:18:00.001-07:00

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"

2008-06-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-04-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

"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...

2008-03-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

"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.

2008-03-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-03-11T08:20:00.000-07:00

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.

Decisions.

2008-03-03T09:09:00.000-08:00

I read this on www.postsecret.com this morning. The funny thins is that I totally registered with it. I do the exact same thing when I enter a room. That is actually one reason why I refuse to have my back towards the door when I am in a room or in a restaurant. I actually started thinking about this idea. This reality that haunts my thoughts when I go somewhere, anywhere, really. Some may call me paranoid or even erratic but I wonder how many other people my age actually think this when they enter a mall, a school, or even their own homes?

Which leads me to the reality that I don't know what my writing does for many of my peers. I come to my blog partly for my own reflection but also partly to try and spread the Good news to anyone who reads it. The question is if we are in such a state of despair in this world what's the point of one blog writer? Why does it matter?

So I once again am departing from the Internet. It seems that I have not much to say any longer in this world of despair other than Christ is the only peace that seems conceivable.

If you haven't understood that from my writing then I have failed to communicate it clearly.

For the Widows in Paradise; For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti, Sufjan Stevens

2008-02-21T07:37:00.000-08:00

I have called you children, I have called you son.
What is there to answer if I'm the only one?
Morning comes in Paradise, morning comes in light.
Still I must obey, still I must invite.
If there's anything to say,
if there's anything to do,
If there's any other way,
I'll do anything for you.

I was dressed embarrassment.
I was dressed in wine.
If you had a part of me, will you take you're time?
Even if I come back, even if I die Is there some idea to replace my life?
Like a father to impress;
Like a mother's mourning dress,
If you ever make a mess,
I'll do anything for you

I have called you preacher; I have called you son.
If you have a father or if you haven't one,
I'll do anything for you. I did everything for you

Dreams Diminished.

2008-02-17T17:20:00.000-08:00

"Purpose determines Existence" Rob Maupin, professor of missions at Lincoln Christian College.

Rob said this in class a couple of weeks ago and I have let it sit in the crock pot of my brain for that long. I realized that in a lot of ways this statement is very true. However, I do not think that this statement is ultimatley true because it would be two narrow in terms of existence.

But hearing this made me think of the dreams I used to have that don't seem to fit into the life that I am living. Which makes these dreams intolerable. These dreams arn't those dreams that people say are too big to reach they just don't fit into the life that I am living anymore.

So I find myself to be floating around Central Illinois quite a bit and reading quite alot. It's amazing how much time I have found to read when I am not obssessing over a dream.

I was actually reading the book of Exodus and I stumbled into chapter 19. This chapter is placed in the midst of the Israelites recent escape from the slavery of the Eygptians. Not only have the Israelites just escaped, Moses is actually on Mt. Sinai and is about to recieve the Ten Commandments from God.

But before God delegates these holy rules one must first read chapter 19 which is the dream and the vision that God gives to the Israelites. This dream is vitally important to the existence of the Israelites and is the reason why the Ten Commandments were given.

For how can God give the Israelites a dream without giving them the means to reach it?

It is written, "You yourseves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on Eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the earth is mine, you will be fore me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." Exodus 19:4-6

It's intersting because, first, God reminds them who the nation is in the kingdom of God and who God is. He reminds them that HE brought them out of Eygpt and HE brought them to Himself. So we must realize that God is God. HE is the creator over all creation and HE is the King of the Israelites. Not pharoah or any other Eygptian God's but Yahwah Himself.

Secondly, HE calls the Israelites his treasure possession. HE tells them that if they keep their part of the promise they made with God through the patriarch Abraham then they will be the treasured possession. Now this word in Hebrew is actually segullah and it literally means to be the crown jewel. To be the center of all beauty on the head of the King.

Thirdly, God peices the whole dream together. HE not only reminds the nation of who they are HE also tells them who they could be in the promise of God. God doesn't leave it at that though. HE tells them who they need to be in relation to other people. God is calling them to be missionaries. I know missionaries is a term that is generally looked down apon and is spat at because of guilt connotations, but God is calling the Israelites to be the holy people among all the nations. HE wants them to not only be holy in communion with him and with each other, HE wants them to be Holy within the context of the nations around them. This is their vision. This is their mission.

Purpose doesn't create existence, God does. But God also creates purpose and HE had one for the people of Israel and HE has one for the Church today. The question is are we so self centered on our own existence that we miss the purpose of the church itself?

2008-02-06T08:03:00.000-08:00

I like to listen to songs over and over again. Not all the time but when I find that there is a song that tugs at my heart strings I tend to want to hear it as long as possible in that singular moment. There is generally something in a song or a melody that I don't understand. That is why I tend to want to go over it again and again.

There is a mystery to a peice of art. When you can listen to something, or look at something, or read something that has been intertwined with the soul it no longer remains something humanly created. There is a divine peice that has partnered with it as well.

Most of the time when I come into contact with a peice of art like this I realize who I am in that moment. I become very small when I come into a collision with something that is full of soul. Simply because I realize that I, for one did not create these things, which makes me realize that I am not God. Secondly, because I am not God I have a great appreciation for what God has done. Thirdly it brings me to a place where I can worship God more definitley because I am not God, I am his child.

This is how I view the great scripture that has been taught to me over all of my time going to church. So many times I approach scripture in such a laxed way. I come to it with the mentality that I will go in to it and then evaluate my life. Instead of letting the scripture come into me and evaluating me. I have lost the revreance for scripture simply because no one has ever really taught it to me.

So let me say this, for all of the readers who come to my blog for one reason or another, scripture is much bigger than you or I will ever be. Now you can naysay it and tell me that I am reading the wrong translation, or that the Greek manuscripts used didn't all match up. You can throw textual criticism around all you want, and there is definitley a place for that.

However, when you come to scripture with the attitude of analyzing it and tearing it apart why then do you wonder about the desparing world around us? Because if you come into scripture analyzing it, then it is not truly changing your life hence it will not change the lives around you.

To everyone who preaches scripture if you are truly aware of the scripture that you are preaching please come to it in prayer and contemplation. Do not take something and just add illustrations and stories to make it sound better. Scripture has a life of it's own. It doesn't always need to be explained away with an illustration.

Realizing that Scripture is so much more than just words on a page, but is written with a soul attatched and with a divine hand we can come to it in humility. We can realize that we are not God because we did not create it. We can also give the appreciation of scripture towards God since we did not create it ourselves, and then we can glorify and honor God through our worship because we can understand who we are in accordance to God.

We can go back to scripture over and over again, just like I do with a song that seems to grasp my soul.

Reflections on Hope.

2008-01-26T08:02:00.000-08:00

"Hope prevents us from clinging from what we have and frees us to move away from the safe place and enter unknown and fearful territory. This might sound romantic, but when a man enters with his fellow man into his fear of death and is able to wait for him right there, "leaving the safe place" might turn to a very difficult act of leadership. It is an act of discipleship in which we follow the hard road of Christ, who entered death with nothing but bare hope."
Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Heart

I read this exert the other day and it struck a cord. Probably because Hope is something that seems to allude me at times. I have the great ability to get so discouraged with the way that the world has slid into desperation. I would even go as far to say that I have the great ability to be discouraged with the way life has seemed to pan out but I know that there is really no truth in this statement.

Partly because the way that life has turned out has nothing to do with me in a large way, and partly because life can only come from Christ, which makes the first statement ultimately true. When I say then that I am discouraged with the way life has turned out, I am actually saying, I am discouraged with the way that sin has encroached the way that I perceive life to be.

If I had a pure and realistic view of life I would be so encouraged that discouragement probably would not be able to sink it's teeth in me.

But if I were to see life in a pure and realistic way hope would not be as necessary. It would still be necessary because one needs to hope that the end will come and that Christ will play the last encore.

In the light of purity and realism hope does not seem as urgent as it does when I am at the bottom of the pit waiting for the lions to rip my skin off.

Hope is something that seems to be one of the redeeming qualities that ring through the story of Christ.

Just as we hope in Christ to defeat death, Christ hopes in us to share in the celebration of life.

Just as we hope in Christ to live again, Christ hopes in us to live out His resurrected life.

Just as we hope in Christ to forgive us of our sins, Christ hopes that we forgive ourselves and others.

Just as we hope in Christ to save the world, Christ hopes in us to partner with him in the fight to freedom.

We have this great capacity to take our position in the kingdom of God and lower it. Instead of taking our rightful seat we feel the need to be the servant outside the banquet hall eagerly waiting for it to be over so we can pick the scraps off the floor.

If we do not have any expectation in life. If our life is not held in hope that Christ is going to change our lives and the lives of the people around us through us than we have missed a large portion of the life story itself.

For expectation is the essence of hope. And hope is the essence of anticipation for something to happen.

Hey, you want to become a slave today?

2008-01-18T17:06:00.000-08:00

Lost and Dry.

2008-01-14T11:29:00.000-08:00

My soul is really dry.

Actually I don't really feel my soul.

Eugene Peterson finds that the Hebrew word for soul is actually a metaphor for neck. It is the part of the body that connects the mind with the rest of the body. It is the part of the body that brings the air from the mouth into the lungs.

That kind of soul seems to be missing. I guess I could easily give a plethora of reasons for it but I can't pin point one down.

I have often been in the dry desolate desert but I have never felt absolutely lost before. This feeling leaves me grasping for something.

It's like I was thrown out into the desert and I so long for someone to come and give me some direction. I came to Bible College clothed in a specific plan which has been ripped away and thrown in the fire. So I find myself where Adam and Eve found themselves. Completely vulnerable in a place that is absolutely terrifying.

A place that leaves my soul in a state of alarm. I am asking questions that I have never fully grappled with.

I was reading Hosea last week and God was talking to the Israelites and describing their adulterous behavior. But later on it says that God tenderly speaks to them and brings them back to Himself.

That image is literally burned in my mind. That tenderness in God's character is something that I so long to encounter. Collision is out of the question. If I collide with anything I will fall very far and very fast into something that I don't know I will ever crawl out of.

I need the tenderness of God's voice to echo into my soul. That living water would sure taste good right about now. I need to be refreshed and revitalized.

So I go on knowing that God is good. That Christ is alive. That the Holy Spirit is active. I trust that God is working in the details.

I trust that there is light somewhere and that I will eventually get to see it again.

Father let your light shine down on me,
Father let your light shine down on me,
No matter what the day or night may bring,
Father let your light shine down on me.

Oh Jesus you became
What was my deepest shame
That at your very name
My calloused heart would change.

How could you perfect one
Love me when I have done
Nothing that's worthy of
My freedom you have one.

Oh wonderful love, you died for me
A power of you life is in me.

Father let your light shine down on me
Father let your light shine down on me
No matter what the day or night may bring
Father let your light shine down on me

Open up the Heavens
Pour on down your spirit"

2008-01-14T07:34:00.001-08:00

"Love is watching someone die

So who's gonna watch you die?"

We are all slowly dying. Every single day we lose more breathe, we lose more stamina, we get older.

Our skin starts to droop, the bags under our eyes become more apparent, wrinkles pop up around our face.

While we are clinging to our youth through plastic surgery, pills, and new jeans we are all falling. Slowly falling apart.

So who's gonna watch you die?

Who is going to be there when you pass your last breath?

Will it be your education? Will it be your salary, or your car or your house? Will it be those whom you have loved all your life?

Or will you be completely alone?

Pure Enjoyment.

2008-01-13T19:54:00.000-08:00

So, I came back to Lincoln today with a frustrating week and weekend behind me. I decided to watch a pretty depressing movie, so my mood wasn't the best.

But then my roommate came back. We did some chatting and I vented a little and then we did something that will remain in roommate history for as long as I live.

I just happened to turn some music on and I started a new game. I would go through a mixed list and every song would get played only fifteen seconds. In that fifteen seconds my roommate had to make up a dance for every random song.

Now not only was this enjoyable for me but it also got my roommate laughing. I finally could not stay seated and turned it to a dance song and got off my bed and started dancing. Now if any of you know me well you know that I am the best worst dancer. I am the best because I can dance in perfect beat. I am the worst because...well let's just say you would have to see it to believe it.

So my roommate and I are now both standing up dancing like crazed maniacs, and our shade is open. Wide open for the world to see.

I am just glad we don't go to a baptist school or we might have been kicked out for dancing. We ended up closing the blinds and having a great time.

Lesson learned; that one truly should enjoy oneself in a state of pure enjoyment while dancing with one's enjoyable roommate.

New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton

2008-01-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

"Nothing could be more alien to contemplation than the cogito ergo sum of Descartes. "I think, therefore I am." This is the declaration of an alienated being, in exile from his own spiritual depths, compelled to seek some comfort in a proof for his own existence(!) based on the observation that he "thinks." If his thought is necessary as a medium through which he arrives at the concept of his existence, then he is in fact only moving further away form his true being. He is reducing himself to a concept. He is making it impossible for himself to experience, directly and immediately, the mystery of his own being. At the same time, by also reducing God to a concept, he makes it impossible for himself to have any intuition of the divine reality which is inexpressible. He arrives at his own being as if it were an objective reality, that is to say he strives to become aware of himself as he would of some "thing" alien to himself: "I am, therefore some thing." And then he goes on to convince himself that God, the infinite, the transcendent, is also a "thing," and"object," like other finite and limited objects of our thought!" pg. 8

I have recently discovered the theologian Thomas Merton this winter break. The passage above comes from a book that is all about realizing who God is through contemplation. When I first read this the first thing that I thought about was the "Secret" that has been so popular this last year or so. My best friend and I have talked about this reality and whether it has the ability to apply to life or not. I first heard about it through Kelly who said that the founder of "The Secret" was on Oprah. Ronda Byrne, the recent founder of this idea "defines The Secret as the law of attraction, which is the principle that "like attracts like." Rhonda calls it "the most powerful law in the universe," and says it is working all the time. "What we do is we attract into our lives the things we want, and that is based on what we're thinking and feeling," Rhonda says. The principle explains that we create our own circumstances by the choices we make in life. And the choices we make are fueled by our thoughts—which means our thoughts are the most powerful things we have here on earth."

Basically if we think one thing and react to the natural order around us we are actually creating our own "fate/destiny/best lifestyle" While I think there is some truth to this I also realize that if this is your full and only philosophy on life you are ultimately going to be disappointed when the things that you cannot control end up causing every single reaction that you display. It's funny because while we can say, we can control our thinking and make our lives better we still are reacting, which in turn shows that we are not in control and that we are not truly thinking first and acting second.

Also this idea actually stems from the statement that Merton describes above. The idea from Descartes that we think first and so then we have a created identity. However, if we base our identity off what we think then we find ourselves to be completely based off of conceptual reality. We then create our own God and create our own savior and mask the reality and the gravity of sin in our own lives.

Because if we think one thing we are ultimately correct. And if we base our thinking off of ourselves and our success, we then destroy morality in the basis of our own society. Our social constructs become useless because our thinking is completely and utterly individual. We then find ourselves to be back in a place of illusion. Without any real grasp on reality and on community.

So the question is do we desire for the ultimate life that is masked in illusion and a preparatory death sentence? A life that is completely individualistic and has no marking of influence and impact? A life where God is defined as a crutch and is not truly needed to intervene and save us?

Do we long for a life that is conceptual and based on the illusion that we are free?

Or do we long for a life that is fully aware that we are not free by our own consolation prizes and that we long and desperately need something to create the moral and the real fiber within our own being?

The choice is yours. Masked bondage? Or a freed reality?

The "Holidays" Aka the Christmas STory,

2007-12-21T11:32:00.001-08:00

So because it is near Christmas I suppose I should write something on how I feel about the holidays.

I lived with the Spirit of Christmas for my first two years in college. My appropriate response to my roommate who watch elf at least once a week starting right after Halloween was to be the nastiest Grinch on the floor. I actually was nick named the Grinch for two years and it still comes up time and again.

However, I enjoy the holidays, I guess I shouldn't call them the holidays because I have never cared to be politically correct.

So I have always enjoyed Christmas but I have never really understood it.

Now I know that I am not stupid but I guess I have never grasped in my own life the impact of the Christmas story.

It's kind of like communion, which I just recently got a real taste of.

You do it, because every one else is doing it and it's written in the Bible but you don't really know why you are doing it.

Then you learn why but you still have that misunderstanding, almost like that well I should do this even though I don't understand why it's such a big deal, but everyone else is making it such a big deal so I might as well too...right?

That is how I feel about Christmas.

It's originally about Christ.

I guess.

But it doesn't seem to matter because I have not been able to grasp it in my own life.

I guess I just don't get it.

And you can use words to explain it and so can I. But words only go so far, and experience only goes so far, and prayer only goes so far, and scripture only goes so far.

It's the fact that I need to collide with the Christmas story to understand it and to start living it out.

Why faith is dirty.

2007-12-20T07:31:00.001-08:00

I was talking to a guy that works at my college about women preachers, simply because he was asking about what I wanted to do after I graduated and we ended up on women who are preaching today.

He had brought up Joyce Meyer and Beth Moore and we were discussing the difference in generations.

I think that these amazing teachers and preachers have an audience of middle aged women whom have had children and whom have been married. Which is great because they need Jesus too and they need to be discipled as well.

But I don't connect with either of these women. Maybe it's because I am a pessimist or maybe it's because I am a cynic. I don't really know.

So while I was communicating that this is a generational thing this guy wanted me to give an example so I told him this.

To them God is good so God sent his son to die for us.

To us Jesus came and saved us and it's because God is good.

To them hope is there and seen and felt.

To us hope is a distant thing that we need to collide with.

To them the church is made up of 'good' Christians.

To us the church is made up of people who are a mess and who are trying to live.

To them faith is a soft compacted manageable thing.

To us faith is dirty and beautiful and untamed.

And that is where I ended. Faith is a gift that has been given to man to use and mold and learn. God doesn't give us gifts to just look at and play with once in a while. They are meant to be used and molded and communicated.

Faith isn't logical. It isn't easily explained. It allows people to follow the Holy Spirit and it shows the world what the biggest difference is between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of men.

I mean you can look at any character in the Bible that is used by God and see that the culture around this individual thought they were out of their mind. Abraham was going to sacrifice his human son, Noah built a big boat, Moses wanted to lead millions of people from oppression, Jonah ended up in a fish, Mary was given the opportunity to mother the Savior of our fallen existence, these men and women were all considered crazies by there culture, because of their faith.

It's funny because we so crave for a revolution. We long for something to change, so we help the poor and we love people, and we think that if we take our social justice and but it on a white banner that we will change the world.

How we are so easily deceived.

We have missed the faith part. The trusting part.

We need to fall to our knees and surrender. Because our logic won't save us from the dirty faith that is commanded to be harnessed in any person who calls themselves a Christ follower.

This dirty, beautiful, faith is the need that the church so longs for. The ability to follow the Holy Spirit without hesitation.

Big words are not the proof of spiritual maturity.

The faith to be obedient is.

Taking it all out.

2007-12-19T16:49:00.000-08:00

So I very short and yet pointed question asked to me today by a friend.

"Do you love God just because of his Majesty?"

I asked the person to expound and he asked me the same question in a different way, "Do you love God because he has done all this stuff for you through Jesus or do you just love God?"

My immediate response was "I love God because I don't know how to love him without all that other stuff. I don't know why I should love him if Christ isn't involved."

My friend's response got me thinking, "Well God gave you life, you should love him just for that."

So I started thinking about that statement, and I came to the realization that if I were to love God because he gave me my existence it still would be a conditional kind of love. I would love God simply because he gave me something. So in essence I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the reality of loving God without it being reactionary. I cannot love God on my own because I simply don't know how to love without loving through reaction which is where the post I just recently blogged about gets hairy because if you are supposed to love in a unconditional manner than the reaction of your life is not supposed to deter that kind of love.

I am not allowed to love in a reactionary way however, I seem to be trapped in reactionary loving. I love because.

But then I start to look at my newly founded relationship with Waylon. I am in love with Waylon and I don't know why. I guess you could say, we are compatible, or I love him because, but then I have those days where I just love him and there is no reason and there is no reaction but because it's just the reality of my life. Then I think whether I would love him even if he did not love me back and I come to the conclusion that I would. If Waylon decided to leave me tomorrow I would still love him. Because the love I have for him is not a worldly love. If my love for Waylon was worldly it would be very easy to stop loving him because a worldly love is flawed and corrupt and isn't truly love. But because this love comes from God I can love him in a deeper sense.

Or I take my niece for another example. There is no way that my niece has done anything for my love. I mean she just was born four years ago and walked into my life and the love just blossomed. There is a love there that I don't understand and only comes from God. It's a love that leaves me speechless at times and allows me to realize that I am very very small in a very big story.

So maybe the love that is embedded in my life is not just reactionary but is just slowly being portrayed through different people. I can love God without it being a reaction because I am commanded to do so, but I feel like it goes much farther than that. It is not just a commandment but it is a planted thing. And when the love I have for God and for myself and for other people is watered and put out in the sun and nurtured the love grows and it's grows like a vine grows on a house. There is no stopping it and it tangles around everything and in everything and through everything.

So the question still remains; Can I love God solely and individually without any help?

And my answer is no. I can not love God first because He loved us first. It was His hand that reached out to us and I can grasp this love and unfold it as I encounter the different aspects of who He is through different experiences, scripture, prayer, and relationships.

Loving You Back

2007-12-14T07:31:00.001-08:00

So yesterday I came to a short realization that is going to lead to a long resolution. God doesn't call people to love you back.

I was thinking about the greatest commandment, "Love the Lord with all your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself" Matthew 22:37-39

The Light Bulb came and I realized that I should stop expecting people to love me back.

Now, most of you out there reading this will find this to be quite unbelievable but let me explain to you why I have come to this conclusion.

Christ commands us to live three things out through this passage. He first commands us to love the Lord our God with everything. Not just with two or three parts of our lives but with every part of our life.

Second he calls us to love ourselves. Now this is generally overlooked because most of the time people immediately go to love your neighbor because it is the first part of the next commandment however, one cannot love their neighbor without first loving themselves. And one cannot love themselves without first loving God with everything they are. So in essence one who does not know God does not know how to love.

So if you didn't catch it before let me show you again in a list form;

1. Love God with everything.
2. Love ourselves.
3. Love our neighbor.

Well that's all fine and dandy but what should I do when I don't feel loved back? When I don't feel like I should be loved back? How should I react and treat the people around me who marginalize my ideas and my lifestyle?

God did not call us to love in a reactionary way.

It's interesting that we, as a consumerist society become so entrapped with being loved. We long so deeply for someone to understand us. We long so deeply to be whole and the only way this is to happen is through someone to make us whole.

However, this is not the case in concern with the life that Christ commands of us. He commands us to love the Lord with everything, Love ourselves with the Lord's love and love our neighbor.

No where in there does it say: Love others to make them whole, Love others so they will love you back, Love others so you may be whole.

The reason I have used this conditional love is because I have grown up in a culture of condition. 'I will give you this, if you give me that. I will love you if you do this for me. I will cherish you only if you help me out. But watch out because when I have a bad day, you will not be loved. When you don't do things that make me happy my love is not for you.'

So many times I have tried to earn this love from other people. I have tried to be good enough, or smart enough, or funny enough, or savvy enough, or culturally acceptable enough for the people that I so crave love from to love me.

But I don't have to be any of those things anymore. I can just be me. I am good just the way that I am. And I didn't find this out on my own but I let someone in who has the ability to tell me that I am good enough and that I can not earn grace but that it's a gift.

So I will strive to do what I have tattooed on my arm.

Love Recklessly. Another layer has unfolded in the revelation of what God's love truly is.

Sermon on the Mount

2007-11-28T07:39:00.000-08:00

"Now when he saw the crowd he went up on a mountianside and sat down. The disciples came to him and he began to teach them saying;

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

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

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for rightesousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted becuase of rightesousness for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you because of me. For great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Matthew 5:1-12

I am required to memorize Matthew 5-7 for a class. Now I started off thinking that I would just be able to get away with memorizing it and not letting it memorize me. haha. That is not seeming to happen though. I can't help but meditate on what I am memorizing. It seems to be something I am breathing in now throughout the day.

So I am going to go devotionally through the book of Matthew. I am probably going to blog about it since that's what I do. I hope you enjoy it. If you don't well then don't come to my blog for a while because that is what I will probably focusing on for a while.

Something Misunderstood.

2007-11-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

This morning I got overwhelmed with the reality that I feel like the church is faltering.

I am reading a book and I just got this overwhelming feeling that it's all hopeless. Now I write this while knowing who Christ is. I write this while having collided with Christ on countless accounts.

He is the truth.

But there are days where my sin gets the best of me. Where I feel like I am swallowed up in my transgressions and in the hopelessness of this world. It's kind of like quick sand. I feel like I am reaching out to something that I can't really reach and my lungs are filling with sand.

On these days my soul aches and the darkness of the spiritual realm becomes overbearing. I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to interact in community. I don't want to live. I want to be what I feel. I want to let the darkness erode my being along with my soul. The hardest part of this process is the people that I am surrounded with. I try to communicate what I am going through and laughter precedes it because I am being over dramatic or unrealistic. When I get laughed at I pull back fast and I walk away and feel misunderstood. Sometimes the deepness of the spiritual warfare cannot be explained but needs to just be, and hopefully you will get through it. This spiritual warfare should be addressed communally but when your community finds you fantastical either because they are afraid of having these conversations or they simply just do not believe you, it's hard to be transparent.

I want to stick my head in the sand like an ostrich and let the world pass me by, but I know that I need to sit up and put my feet on the ground. I need to go through the day even when the day seems to allude my senses. I can no longer become lost in the opinions of what the Christians and the non Christians all push and pull around on their bandwagons.

So I will grapple for the truth as I sit here and combat the spiritual darkness that pierces every pore of my body.

It's one life that defeated the darkness and that life is the life that I find my identity and dive into.

Hey, I got engaged.

2007-11-26T16:39:00.000-08:00

2007-11-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

I have seen and heard about so many churches and how they have been slowly dying. These churches were at one point in history the thriving, communal place to be, but for some reason the old is really getting old and the newly birthed churches are blowing up. I sit back, in a town of ten thousand with at least five different denominational churches and realize even now that these churches are not reaching a good portion of the demographic. If it’s like this in Lincoln where one of the best Bible College’s remains what is like in other small towns where the strong presence of a bible college is missing? So I must come to some conclusion for the declension in the life of the church. I could easily say it’s the culture’s fault, but when has that excuse ever worked? I know I need to look deeper and the reality that I keep coming back to is that the church does not know how to dance.

I have always loved to dance with a partner, because it makes things so much more interesting. Everyone dances differently and so you get a different kind of dance with every single person. You could be dancing the same dance with two different people and it will leave you in a different state of being. The most interesting thing that I have noticed about a dance is that someone needs to lead. Without a leader the dance does not seem to go anywhere and body parts seem to flay in destructive ways. Heads bump into each other, arms flay and legs get twisted. Someone inevitably gets hurt and both of the embarrassed dancers walk off the dance floor, not only licking their physical wounds but also licking their wounded pride. But, when there is leader present the dance becomes a beautiful wonder. There is a movement that the audience can not deny and it sweeps both the dancers and the spectators.

The church has lost its vigor to dance. It has lost it's want to partner with the Holy Spirit and follow the Holy Spirit around in a erotic and sensual dance that will leave the church intimately reformed.

Missing the Holy Moment

2007-11-14T16:10:00.000-08:00

I recently just went to a Switchfoot concert. The last time I went to one of their concerts was when I was a junior in high school in Chicago. The funny thing is that I have a specific memory from that concert.

I went with a couple of student community leaders from our student group and a couple other high schoolers. I remember that Nick and I were sitting on a bench at 11 o 'clock at night and we were talking about colleges. I still was wavering from the Bible College realm to the University realm. Journalism or Ministry? Nick told me that he thought I would grow more efficiently at a Bible College with a Christian roommate than with a roommate that came back to the room drunk.

Weird how that conversation stuck in my mind. It seemed to be a necessary Holy Moment, even though I didn't realize it.

Well I went to this Switchfoot concert with Waylon and his youth group. It was fun because the concert floor wasn't packed so you didn't feel like you were being suffocated by people. We heard Ruth, Reliant K and then Switchfoot came on stage.

There seemed to be a weight to there music that didn't seem to be found in the other bands. So we were watching them and thoroughly enjoying them and the singer started singing a song and started moving through the audience. He ended up about ten feet away from us and it was amazing how people gravitated to him and tried to touch him. It was a weird reality.

So the lead singer was having this moment in the audience and most of the audience was captivated by this moment. They understood the weight in the air and the mass behind the message. But, there were those who didn't get it, and didn't care much for the message. They were loud and obnoxious and extremely distracting.

It wasn't just that they were distracting it was that they were distracting the community from the Holy moment presented. From the Holy message that was trying to be relayed.

How many times do we miss the Holy Moment because we are not looking for it, or because we like hearing our own voices more than anything?

Does the church ever get to lost in it's own 'mission' and 'vision' that it misses the holy moment?

The Beauty of Sacrafice Cont'd.

2007-11-10T06:45:00.000-08:00

So, I was preaching at a local church near Lincoln and the topic that we were trying to hit was; What does sacrifice look like in your daily life?

There was a question-answer part of the sermon at the very end, and the question above was given to me. I actually received most of my questions a couple days beforehand so I could think about how I would respond in the moment.

While thinking about sacrifice, the first thought was children. So many times parents sacrifice everything for their children. They bank everything on their children's future because they want to see and give them the best.

God is kind of like that. He sacrificed everything so that we might have life, and have it to the fullest.

While this sacrifice actuality is looked upon negatively at first, when one looks deeper into this idea there is something much greater.

There is Beauty. This great beauty is the after effect of this sacrifice. This beauty emulates the life that is given after the death has been taken.

And this beauty cannot be tamed. Just like the life that is given cannot be tamed. It can be self-disciplined to obey it's master, but if the master has sacrificed everything for it's servant than the beauty of it cannot be denied. The loyalty of the servant cannot be deterred or hidden. The servant who fully grasps this beauty and this life will do anything and everything for it, including sacrificing anything and everything for it.

We can try to look at this life in a purely logical way but logic cannot analyze and determine beauty. It cannot take beauty and tame it. It cannot tell beauty where to go and what to do because there is too much overflow. True beauty cannot be tapped.

This is where I turn when I see despair and desolation around me. When I watch the news and all I hear about is more school shootings and sexual abuse. When I see sin encroaching in every relationship that I am in.

I go back to the sacrifice that was made and the life that was birthed and the beauty that was and is clearly showcased and overflowing.

Because there truly is beauty to sacrifice.

2007-11-08T11:00:00.001-08:00

There is beauty in sacrafice.

More on this later.

On my own terms

2007-11-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

So I went to a random class yesterday and heard this really smart, soon to be professor, teach.

And he kept using this phrase that I caught onto.

"On my own terms"

He was referring to Christ and was discussing the reactions of the many people in the Old and the New Testament in concern to this phrase.

I have always realized this and even lived it out myself but sometimes you hear something old for the first time again. When I look into the New Testament and see all of Christ's interactions with people it's amazing how many times people come to Christ with "their own terms."

And how many times do I come to Christ "on my own terms" hoping that what I imagine will come true. What I fantasize and romanticize might be the truth when in all actuality I'm totally off mark.

I wonder if we come to Jesus on our own terms as the church?

2007-11-07T06:18:00.000-08:00

I wish none of this had happened... So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. -J.R.R. Tolkein

Jews and socialism

2007-11-06T20:42:00.001-08:00

A freshmen just asked me if I hated Jews...

huh?

also I believe that our country is heading towards the slippery slope of socialism, this I concur from the fact that I think Hilary Clinton will get the presidency because there is a governmental conspiracy.

The government is unfortunately not for the people anymore.

Sorry to break the news I'm sure I'm not the first, but if i disappear you all know why.

Deterioration

2007-11-06T13:29:00.001-08:00

Do you ever feel like you are slowly deteriorating? I mean your insides. On the outside you look normal, but the insides are being slowly chipped away. Most of us don't really know why that is, so we try to use a natural medication for a supernatural epidemic.

However, I don't really think it works out, because there will always be that one moment when we will be left with ourselves. There will be an eventual moment when everything is torn away and we are left with what we have and want we sadly do not have.

This is why movies like Garden State, Elizabethtown, The Last Kiss, and The eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are so stinking popular because, they are clips of that slight moment. This moment seems to strip us of our doing and forces us to reckon with ourselves.

This reality strips us naked and leaves us out to freeze in the cold of loneliness and desperation. This cold ripples our skin and strips the marrow from our bones. It melts our fleshy surface, and leaves us with our soul to dry up in the wind.

While we are caught up in this moment we have a decision to make. Now I could be very limited and tell you that you only have two choices, but that would be very sardonic of my own existence. So I cannot give you only two choices but I must realize that you do have to make a choice because repetition is not truly possible, and the ascetic cannot be lived out.

Alas, we are called to make a slight decision to determine how we are going to react to our 'real' selves if they even exist, outside ourselves.

A Dream

2007-11-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

So, I had yet another dream. This is not unfamiliar in the life of one Alison Higgins, but this specific dream was more like a parable than a weird dream.

Let me paint a picture for you of what I saw.

The setting was a street. There was nothing around except for two lawn chairs on the opposites sides of the streets. One was white and orange and one was lime green and white. The street was in a dessert and there were mountains in the distance.

And a man walked up in a blue button down shirt. He was older and if you looked closely you would see that he had been weathered by the storms of life. However, if you looked closely at his eyes you would see the laugh lines around his eyes. He sat down in the lime green chair.

Then along came a young man. This man was wearing a pink athletic shirt. There wasn't many things defined in this young man. All I know is that he was big. Not fat but big.

He sat down in the orange and white chair.

There was a short exchange between the both of them.

"I really like your shirt," the young man said to the old man.

"Well, that's interesting. I would be willing to lend it to you."

Then suddenly the young man and the old man both took their shirts off and switched.

They put on the other's shirts and walked away. Leaving the two chairs and the sun setting in the distance.

Something to say and someone to say it to.

2007-10-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

I have really nothing to say. I am actually dry as a bone. I have written something about the game scrabble and defined more categories as a good modernist should but it doesn't seem to be worth any thing.

There has been a strange shift in my reality lately and I have a hard time dealing with it. I have found someone who wants to love and serve me selflessly. I have found someone who truly means the world to me and I have never been accustomed to that. I have always been the lone ranger, or the bitter romantic who knew that she was never going to have the "happy ever after" simply because she never had the "once upon a time" I look back on my life and have come to a realization.

As most of you know I used to scorn romantic relationships. I had no fervor for the romantic and I considered it a waste of time. But I secretly struggled with it, because I felt like it was never going to happen. It was a weird sword fight of wanting something holy and rejecting the whole idea. I guess I figured the goodness that I was looking for was never going to happen so I shoved it away and covered it up with the logic of faith and the reason of love. The problem with my sealed solution is that it logically and reasonably couldn't function.

I actually remember hearing a couple on campus use an analogy for relationships. They said that if you and the person next to you are running toward the Lord together you know you are supposed to be together. I walked away and I came up with my own analogy. I figured if you are running toward the Lord and the other person is running toward the Lord and the three of you collide that is when you know, and I have carried that around with me for three years.

I didn't want something mediocre. I didn't want something to pass the time. I had no desire of getting into a relationship and getting married and settling down and being the quaint house wife that cooks dinner. I am not a cook in the first place and I certainly am not quaint by any means. So I figured I would chuck the whole thing out the window and become content with being single and living a life that was determined on following God. I came to that point three months ago. I was determined to go to school and follow the Holy Spirit around like a love sick puppy dog.

And I did, the problem is that He led me into a relationship that I was apparently fully ready for but was certainly not prepared for. And so I found myself in a place with a man named Waylon Lawrence whom I had known briefly the year before but had not passed much time with. The thing about Waylon is that he was content with God too. He wasn't looking for anything out of the ordinary and then we seemed to stumble into each other and fall into God's ultimate power, which suits us because we are both fully clumsy individuals.

Waylon has become the love of my life. I would try to explain it but it would seem superfluous and silly. I would sound like a child using words that I can't grasp nor fully understand. And so I will just say that he is my beloved and that I would proclaim it to anyone, anywhere, and at any time of the day.

And the best part is that I haven't stopped following the Holy Spirit. Now I just get to do it in an even better way because Waylon catches things that I don't, and sees things that I can't see. Lucas posted a comment that if you want to do great things for God remain single and if you want to know God get married and have a family.

Well I am saying I am going to do great things for God with Waylon because God is great and his greatness will shine through.

Like I said, not much to say simply because what I am going through I can not fully explain using words. They just don't seem to matter or make any sense at this point. Maybe I will get my words back some day I will be able to explain it but I'm not banking on it.

Cling to the Living.

2007-10-19T07:26:00.001-07:00

If you know me well you know that I would never tell you that I have been fully saved. I never had that moment where I "turned my life around" I would even go as far to say that I don't think that a person can be fully saved. I would however, say that I am constantly being converted.

God is constantly giving me chances to follow and I am hesitantly getting better at obeying his requests. I came to a point this last summer when I realized that everyday I get up and the only thing that is keeping me alive is Christ. I figured when I came to that conclusion I should start living that way.

Well I am a consistent frequenter of postsecret.com and I saw this postcard this week. I have been doing some major reflecting in the last two days and when I saw this it reminded me of my past life. I don't want to say my old life because each day I am being given a chance for my present life to win out and my past life to be what it should be, the past. So I saw this postcard and started thinking about the past. My great grandma started this whole dying thing off when I was in seventh grade and it didn't end until my Senior year of high school. I had seven people die in the time frame of five years. And this is the first time that I have publicly written it out. I don't like talking about death. Every time I bring someone home my mom will talk about high school and how hard it was for me and I get really emotional and avoid the conversation.

My friend Nick knows this about me. I don't like being in a very high strung emotional environment. Even if it is a celebration. I have a really hard time controlling my emotions and so the best thing is to turn them off and to let them go. I am getting better at it thanks to a God send but it's still really hard for me. I am so used to pulling away and separating myself from really emotional situations. That way I don't hurt anyone and I don't get hurt in the process.

That is the state that I have been living at and in the past that post card would ring very true in my life. I clung to the living but I do remember telling people that death and I where bed mates. While I clung to the living I did it out of selfish manipulation and self protection.

God has opened my eyes quite a bit in the last three years and has healed a lot of those wounds. I am still very sensitive when it comes to death and pain but I have come to the conclusion that God is my everything. I am learning that life tastes different when God is your everything, and while it's very hard sometimes, this life is so good.

Morning Conversation

2007-10-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

"You have so many strikes against you...pretty much only by the grace of God are you going to get into Heaven"- Rob

"That's what I'm banking on"-Me.

2007-10-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

I am the way the truth and the life.-Jesus

I am reading G.K. Chesterton write down. We have started conversing about his book Orthodoxy quite a bit and he hits on a lot of stuff that I have been thinking through in concern to theology and philosophy.

"Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immorality I need not to think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity."

For whoever wants to save his life will lost it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.-Jesus

So lets talk about this life idea. I have life. I come out breathing and screaming and in essence living. But what is the life that Jesus is talking about? I know that we walk around dead when we are sinners, but how are we walking around in death. In my mind death is the end of a living organism. Which means nothing will be walking around if it is dead. But then I think about Hell or what we view of Hell as the western church. If we are dead in hell then we are not living.

I guess I need to redefine death and redefine life for this paradox to truly make sense.

I love him.

2007-10-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Church, Cake, and Conceptual Lenses.

2007-10-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

So I got the opportunity to go to the church Waylon is interning at this last weekend. The situation was a huge shock for me. The whole weekend was a huge shock for me in general. I did have some incredible cake though...mmm...so good.

Church wasn't bad but there seemed to be something missing. I couldn't really put my finger on it. I haven't had much time to reflect on it but I wanted to write some ideas down. Dr. Zorn was preaching from Luke and was talking about how Jesus went into his home synagogue and read scripture. He then told the people sitting there that he was the answer to this prophesied message. Jesus then rolled up the scroll of scripture and sat down. Haha, like in classic form he brought people in and then allowed them to react. I was sitting there in church and I realized that if Jesus came into the place where I was at and read scripture and told us that he was the fulfillment of it the whole church would slander him and probably kick him out. I actually imagined it happening when Dr. Zorn was preaching.

Which actually is a lesson that I have been learning for a couple of weeks. Last week in my Greek class we were translating Mark 8. It's the instance when Jesus asks his disciples who do they say he is. Peter speaks up and tells him that he is the Christ, the son of the living God. But that's not where the conversation ends. A little after this holy moment Jesus starts speaking of his suffering and how he will have to die under the teachers of the law. Peter of course rebukes Jesus. He tells Jesus that this just can not be.

I was sitting in Chapel yesterday and the only thing I didn't like about the preacher was that he termed the disciples the da-sciples. He actually used this text that I translated last week. This preacher publicly scorned the way that Peter reacted to Jesus.

I sat there and got really frustrated because Peter wasn't stupid. Peter just had a different presupposition of what the Messiah was supposed to look like. Peter's conceptual lens clashed with Jesus conceptual lens. Peter's worldview clashed against Jesus' worldview. It had nothing to do with the Peter's intellect.

Peter was reflecting his culture onto Jesus. How many times do we as a church clash against Jesus and his true mission? How many times as a church do we fall short of who we are called to be?

The scariest question is; How many times as a church do we reject Jesus?

2007-10-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

I was reading Jeremiah 31 this morning. I noticed that in verse 33 that the Lord says, "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts."

I wonder what is rampant in my mind and what is written on my heart.

This is the question of the week; What is written on your heart?

I Stand by the Door, Samuel Moor Shoemaker

2007-10-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

I stand by the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world--
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There's no use my going way inside, and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
With outstretched, groping hands.
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it...
So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door- the door to God.
The most important thing any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch- the latch that only clicks
And opens to the man's own touch.

Men die outside that door, as starving beggers die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter-
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live, on the other side of it-live because they have not found it,

Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find him...
So I stand by the door.
Go in, great saints, go all the way in-
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics-
It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit thsoe inner rooms,
And know the depth and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture in a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening...
So I stand by the door.

There is another reason why I stand there.
Some people get part way there and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of his house devour them;
For God is so very great, and asks all of us
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia,
And want to get out. "Let me out" they cry.
And the people way inside only terrify them more
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled
For the old life, they have seen too much:
Once they taste God, and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.

The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving-preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,
But would like to run away. So for them, too,
I stand by the door.

I admire the people who go in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not yet even found the door,
Or the people who want ot run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long,
And forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear him, and know he is there,
But not so far from men as not to hear them,
And remember they are there, too.
Where? Outside the door-

Thousands of them, millions of them.
But-more important for me-
One of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
"I had rather be a door keeper..."
So I stand by the door.

"I Stand by the door" by Samuel Moor Shoemaker

The Question I have is this: Are we called to stand by the door or knock on it?

2007-10-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

So my roommate told me that I needed to meet with the Lord today. Partly because I havn't actually sat down and entered into his world through the Bible in a week or so, and I was saying that out loud and so my roommate said, "You sit right down and you meet with the Lord."

So I sat in my 47 year old blue chair and I got my Bible out and my devotional book, and I delved into world that is constantly surprising to me. I read Psalm 103 this morning and something caught my eye. In verse 9 of that Psalm it says that "He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever."

I thought about this and I realized that they used an absolute word here. Always. But it was being denoted. The author said he does not always. Which means he is not as consitent as we think. And then I read the second part of the verse and it said "nor will he harbor his anger forever," and I realized that someone who has anger has a choice on what he is going to do with his anger.

God can choose what he wants because He is not absolute.

Oh, my head hurts.

I also read some awesome Samuel Shoemaker which I will blog about later.

I'm Anti-somethin'

2007-10-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

For such a long time I have lived in Absolutes. I have had a couple of bad experiences with relationships and have chalked them all off. For three years I have been completely turned off to the idea of dating and marriage. I guess I came on campus and suddenly dating and marriage were status quo. It was like their was no longer a holy union. It had been torn apart by the mediocrity of our culture.

And I didn't want any part of this mediocre culture. I have never been one to settle for something that wasn't Awe inspiring. I didn't want to get into a relationship with someone who didn't understand my kingdom purpose. Heck, I didn't want to get into a relationship with any of my peers because no one really understood me. I weirded them out. Not only were they turned off but I started being turned off by this whole realm of flowers and candy and cheesiness. To the point where at the beginning of this semester I had completely given up on the whole thing.

I was talking to a professor on campus and I was telling him this reality of singleness in my own life and he just smiled at me. He said "okay, let's see how this semester unfolds for you." I was so frustrated with him because I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted to sink in my education and I wanted to be left alone. I was content with me and God. I was content with what my life was going to look like single. I didn't want anyone to come and mess it up.

But God knows me better than I know myself. He actually cares for me more than I care for myself. And he put someone in my life that just wouldn't seem to leave me alone. (more on this later maybe)

So, today, I was sitting in the car and I was talking to my roommate and she asked me this, "So alison, do you feel kind of like an ass for doing what you said you would never do?"

And I told her no, I said "I guess I hate bad relationships, and by bad relationships I mean unhealthy ones. I hate anything that is not kingdom focused. I hate relationships that are all about selfish realities. I guess I have to say that I am kind of an absolutist and so if I have a couple of bad experiences than I just chuck the whole thing out the window. I hate being an absolutist too. "

So while I have always been Anti most things I guess its okay to give in once in a while. Otherwise life wouldn't be as spontaneous as it is.

This post didn't make any sense, at least probably not to you...haha.