cairns

When a skilled and caring teacher see a person with less skill or heart mishandling a child, it can be depressing.  Everything in the quality teacher’s training, heart, and soul cries out that it doesn’t have to be that way.  They know that children can be lovingly held accountable to achieve excellence in both academics and behavior.  They know that beating a child down with words or actions has never lifted up a healthy adult; neither the adult whom that child will become nor the teacher trying to establish their superiority.  And the pain of having to observe such a wrong can go deep down into the hidden parts of your being to hide as fatigue, illness, or depression.

OR, when a skilled and caring teacher sees a child receiving less than the love their place in the Kingdom of God deserves, they can look up in gratitude and realize they have a reason to exist that day.  They are in the presence of a child who needs them.  They can be the difference between a child’s day of torment, or a child’s finding a place of refuge.  They can participate in the work of heaven by living out their calling with new evidence of the importance of their presence in that place, at that time.

Until the day when The Teacher holds class for all of us little ones forever, may every holy servant of the Truth know without question that they are loved by the One who declared that the Kingdom belongs to children — loved beyond their wildest imagining and given as a gift of light in dark places and dark times.  May they rest in the simple knowledge that a very small light changes everything in the darkest of places.  May they know that the arm they place around a wounded child is met by the hand of God.

peace

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Global Warming Permanent

Looks like if we are determined to keep building a hell rather than a heaven, we are succeeding marvelously.  Praying today, like the Hasidics, that each choice I make is to tip the scale to good.  Remembering Pastor Trocme in that other evil time, and trying to make little moves where I can.

Not driving back and forth to Dearborn this summer to do a camp involves a lot of reasons.  But, this one is on the list.  Time to NOT make multiple high mile trips, or local, if there is not a compelling reason to go.  They will do camp just the same without my body buzzing my little SUV up there and back.

peace

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We had a really good discussion (with precious few people attending) last night at church led by D.  She shared her experiences and struggles with the in-your-face poverty of Africa framed in Biblical context.  The best part of it all was her transparency in admitting there are no sure bet, do this every time, magic program answers  for either the macro-systems,  or the  micro-encounter with the individual beggar.

My paraphrase is that there is only the cross.  Looking suffering in the face, speaking and listening with the real people you encounter, and connecting where you can.  Listening to the promptings of the Spirit, following the example of Jesus to do “what the Father is doing,” and obeying as you are able.  These are the two axis of the cross — meaningful reconciliation both vertical and horizontal, divine and human, bringing yourself into the world’s needs large and small as you are called.

It was very interesting to hear the comments of the few others there. J continues to amaze me.  About the time I have him pegged and labeled in his conservative pastoral theology and politics, he reveals a heart open to God and  willing to wrestle with divine promptings outside his previous understandings.

Disturbing was how a discussion of “the least of these” turned to whether our own future tense salvation was threatened if we fell among the goats.  We so quickly make it about us.  Never mind that today we drove (our society prevents us from having to walk by and see or touch) past Him in need, turned up the MP3, hid behind our window tint, and hurried past His need to reach our temples.  To the credit of the friends there, I believe they were touched and deeply considered that interpretation when raised.  But, I am quite sure that today we all did it again.

Thank you again D for inviting and encouraging us to live in the discomfort of encountering without answers, loving as sisters and brothers (not parents to children), and daily struggling to walk in holy footprints.

peace

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don’t ask me how my mind is contemplating theology right now, as I begin writing I do not know.

But, this idea is rolling around, growing, and begs to be expressed.  I have always had problems with American Calvinist versions of election and damnation, even when they are billed as free will.  The idea that God will save those who hear and are able to respond to the message, does not seem much different from the hard core teachings of His only choosing a few elect anyway.  I have written about it here before.

But in the past, I have always seen it presented as a driving force for evangelism and mission — got to go to those millions God is going to damn if we don’t get somebody there to tell them!  What is dawning on me now is how it works in the opposite direction.  I believe its underlying message is actually anti-evangelism as in the original American churches, but more subtly.

I know my church history well enough to know that the old order American Calvinists believed in proving your election, not evangelization.  What I am contemplating now is a similar effect among folks who believe they are evangelicals. 

Does a belief that God is willing to damn millions who never hear lead to a belief that we — white, northern, western, literate, wealthy — have a special claim on the call?  Does it lead to a subtle way of neglecting our neighbor who has so many chances to join us in church?  If God will condemn those who never hear, why should we make extra effort to reach out to those who do not come to us?  Again, I am not talking about anything we would verbalize.  I am talking about subconscious justifications of neglecting our brothers and sisters.

Let me push it past “four laws,”  does it subtly let us have hard hearts toward those who live in poverty, who are without political voice, who are left behind no matter how much propaganda we hear?  If we believe that God is willing to send millions blindly off to hell, does that allow us the subtle out we need to ignore their hell which is now?

Ahh, there is the connection.  Will you ignore me and my suffering loved one if you decide decide we are not like you?  Will you condemn us?  Does the prevalent theology of the American church invite you to look the other way, just like your uncaring god?

peace

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