cairns

It was beautiful to see all of the loved ones who came, some from far away; the excellent weather on top of the little hill at Garrison Chapel Cemetery; and to share in the hope and challenge of a life lived in service to God.

I thought I would include a link to my marked copy of what we shared for some who could not be there.

Moms funeral

Thanks to everyone who attended, who prayed, and who loved our parents.

peace

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I have written about this before, in fact I am writing and talking about it all the time now in various forms.  Blame it on the Who, “Freedom tastes of reality!”  This one simple Truth keeps speaking to me in various forms and continuing to set me free from bonds carefully tightened for half a century.  So, here I go again.

For years I have heard, and even used, the expression, “It’s who you know, not what you know,” as a criticism of power situations involving favoritism.  Most literally we have used it to refer to situations where the most qualified job applicants are unfairly passed over because the job is given to a person with an inside track.

Now, I realize (over and over in intoxicating joy) that it is in very real ways my Worldview as a Christian!  For so long I was taught, and taught others, that being a Christian was a matter of believing certain things and behaving in certain ways (by grace mind you ‘less any man should boast’ — but doing very specific things none the less).  Then, God kept showing up — as a woman living in a landfill in Mexico, a little boy with AIDS in Ethiopia, Christa students and staff (many times), a Hebron kindergartner, a presence beyond all words on a mountain at night in China, in once in a lifetime and in everyday situations…The One all of those lists and things were supposed to be about just keeps actually showing up in people who I have no reason to assume know my list of required thoughts or actions — keeps showing up in books by people who deny many of the things on my treasured lists.  God keeps showing up, smiling at my foolishness, and opening the loving arms to home.

And now I am ’sure, and very sure’ that what matters truly is Who I know, not what I know.  Scripture is very clear that the Divine already knows us and seeks us out so that we might know as well until that day when we finally “know as we are known.”

And, it is not ‘knowing’ the right things about the Divine. It is waking up to the reality that you have met and come to know the Divine that already knows and loves you.  I know Who holds my hope, my life, my joy, my future, my (frustrating lately) health, my family, and my friends.  I know who holds everything because they made everything and love everything they created.

And, I know that I Am loves all of us.

We used to say it, but we didn’t mean it.  We really meant that the Creator, Sustainer, Finisher WANTED to love everybody if they would give up on being unlovable by being different from us (of course we always phrased it like ‘give up their life of sin’) and allow Him not to kill them forever.  It just is not what I now find the Bible, or the One I encounter, actually saying.  I know the One who already loved us before we existed with full knowledge of everything about us.  I know Who loves us.  That is all I need to know — not what, just Who.

And, tomorrow the Divine will show up yet again revealing to me how much more there is yet to learn because I do not yet fully comprehend how deep and wide is the Love.  Perhaps the Divine will come to me as you.

peace

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My head is still spinning from visiting a China so different from everything I was taught.  So, I continue to process on multiple layers.  This week I have been pondering a possibility that the Communists/Socialists have already learned a lesson we are still struggling to master.

I am pondering it partially because of the extreme anger expressed by the polarized camps over proposed changes in American health care.  It occurs to me, that we are struggling with something bigger than medical care and costs.  Costs certainly do not seem to matter when we choose to destroy people we consider “other.”  I think the real issue just may be the tyranny of grand designs.

Both China and the Soviet Union have already spread power out from one center of control to many localities.  They were in many ways more modern than us in their years of building.  Their true believers thought it was possible to design one system which would work for all people.  They fought for it, killed for it, sacrificed rights for it, and it did not work.  I believe they are ahead of us in the move past it to understanding that man is incapable of creating grand designs that fit all people.

I think our love of individualism and emphasis on individual accomplishment within our system may have blinded us to this same lesson.  We are still arguing about which political party is best suited to creating the country that works for us all.  I think we should look East.  The giant empires are spreading power to smaller units for local control.  There is no longer a faith in human capacity to create plans from the center of power which will work for everyone. We cry out repeatedly that we do not want Washington controlling our lives and choices!  When will we actually listen to ourselves and believe what we are saying?  Creating the one right answer is a task beyond the capacity of man.

Praise God, it was never given to us to do in the first place.  I am not completely post-modern.  I think the Communists still miss the essential fact.  There is One Who Is.  There is a Grand Plan which came into being by the first Word of Being.  The Tao, the Logos, the Word made Flesh contains all the plan the world needs.  We are not capable.  He is. (It’s God’s name after all!)

I hope we learn the lesson before we return to the methods of violence so common to man’s past when any group feels pressed too far, or becomes true believers that their philosophy will be best for all once the opposition is silenced.  The debate was clear and loud at the original US Constitutional Convention — should power be centralized or widely dispersed in the States?  After 200+ years of experimenting, the anger tells me we are not happy with master plans, systems of public welfare, collection and dispersal of taxes, or control of our basic life needs under the control of any far removed representatives.

Perhaps it is time, with faith in a Loving, All Knowing, Victorious God the communists do not know, to follow their lead on human systems and quit trying to build planetary houses of cards.  Perhaps it is time for power and control to be more widely spread, more available to the people who pay for them and depend upon them.  Maybe Washington is never going to be Jerusalem (History clearly shows that there have been people who thought otherwise.)  The Communists are copying us in trying to substitute the God of money even as they break apart the central powers.  We know that path is folly as well.  There is no grand human plan that will save us.

Where should power reside?  How about a manger, a carpenter’s house, an oppressed countryside, a cross, and in glorious mystery both seated in Heaven and enthroned in human hearts?  May we realize again that the power that will decide our fates is unmoved by human whims, votes, Supreme Courts, legislatures, Presidents, Dictators, and tyrants.  The eternal comes as a small child and is still moved by the genuine prayers of a single small child, not decrees of state.

If anybody read all that, thanks for musing with me.  I think we are witnessing the end of the man’s worship of large scale human solutions.  I hope we do not damage each other too much in the process.  I’ll be here with the Babe who made all, sustains all, and completes all.

peace

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Sometimes I think what upsets me the most when people I love make comments that strike me as racist, pro-war, or anti-environmental is my separation from my past.  I sit and wonder how in the world I ended up way over here on my end of the teeter totter alone while friends, relatives, and church members all seem to be rushing off the other side?

My oldest daughter quoted a friend as once telling her its like a marathon — you start out in a crowd and in the course of your life eventually find you are running alone.  I should have spent more time talking with that friend!

I have come up with a few answers that seem reasonable.  In the course of my life I have come to love the under-dog, the working class, the abused, the stranger, peace over war, global friendship over domination, life (all of it, not just embryos), and a God who continues to create and recreate, who calls us out of our past and into transformation.  Most of what I hear American conservatives saying just will not let me join them.

But there is another facet.  The liberals go off the deep end to the left.  A woman should be able to end a pre-birth life for any reason she and her doctor agree upon.  Government is the answer for everything.  More laws will keep people from acting like idiots.  Christianity is evil because it dares to declare that there is Truth which exists beyond our relative positions.  There is a limit to how far I can go down that road.

And I think that is one of the real reasons I lean to the left so often.  There are limits and boundaries to how far I will run with that crowd.  But, the other path; the less government is better camp?  I grew up during the idiocy of Vietnam, the days of lynchings un-investigated, the days of rage, the days of cold war with the real possibility that our government and theirs would blow us all to oblivion, the days of the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Zeppelin, and the Dead, the days of Abbie Hoffman and Bobby Seal and there is the rub!  If I start down the path of opposing government, I might return to the zeal of youth.  I might return to the days when my friends and I loved the country and the people but wished the whole government would disintegrate and allow the people to live in peace.  Down that road lies the path to revolution.

So maybe I choose to face to the left as I stand here on the crossbar. When the right takes real action to defend the unborn I step that way.  When the left takes steps to protect the rest of life, I step their way.  When the left seeks minimum standards of care for those I love, I step to the left.  When the right says we cannot pay for everything, I very carefully step that way.  When the right says we should intervene when madmen are killing innocents around the world, I carefully step their direction.  When the left points out that we cannot bring peace with the sword (odd how everybody thinks our new president is a leftist and he accepts the Nobel speaking of just wars…), I definitely move their way.  I agree we just aren’t big enough to rule the world.

And, I find myself standing here on the crossbar looking up to heaven and saying, “Wasn’t taking care of the place your job?  Wasn’t your work finished when it was begun, sealed on the cross, and revealed perfect through resurrection?  I cannot follow these men and women on their teeter totter!  Can I stay here with you, on the cross-bar?”

Maybe that’s when I ran off by myself.  When I intentionally went nuts, chose happiness over logic, gave up on the governments of men, gave up hope in everything except—except the One I met here on the Cross-bar.

peace

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Quite simply, I think the name describes too much of  it perfectly.  Behind a very thin veneer of God talk, there seems to me to be more worship of, and faith in, our culture and its systems than anything I can call God.

The last thing I attended before leaving my church home of many years included the showing of a video urging people to “run” from the danger that surrounds us and to the Truth.  Nobody else seemed to notice that most of the imagery was American rather than Christian icons.  I don’t think there is any difference left between the two in most of their thinking.

I feel like I can easily be misunderstood here.  I feel pride when I see the symbols of our country.  I hope someday to stand in the observation area of the Statue of Liberty prominently displayed in that video.  But, the “god” she invites the world’s poor to enter is America, not Jesus.

I think the proposition can be tested by anyone willing to subject themselves to the outcome.

Have a conversation with a “Bible believing pastor.”  Start talking about feeling called like Francis to take the Biblical quotes of Jesus seriously and abandon earthly possessions in exchange for a life of service and fellowship with God.  What are the odds that they will anoint you in your calling?  What are the odds that they will begin to counsel you on the wisdom of careful preparation — financial as well as academic?

Sit in one of their committee meetings and suggest that we should just watch and listen to see what God appears to be doing and do likewise — like our Bible says Jesus claimed was the only thing He ever did.  What are the odds that they will put away their pda’s, newsprint, and vision-mission-goals manuals?  What are the odds that they will invite you to stop talking craziness or leave?

It’s not that I do not love my country.  I have been fortunate to travel and see enough of the alternatives to feel deeply blessed by my national birthright.  It’s not that I do not think these modern  forms of planning have served us well in many specific cases.  I teach them to people when I do consulting, along with some post-modern cautions against falling into the trap of believing the rest of the world (or even your own organization) will conform to your plans!

But, I do not worship my country.  I do not place my hope in good business practice.  I do have my investments and I do try to be careful about my allocations.  But, my future in this world, this lifetime, is not guaranteed by them.  I am a child of the children of the Great Depression, so more than my Bible tells me that economic security can blow away like dust in a drought.

Just maybe this underlying worship of country and culture instead of God is what is pulling some of my generation to the older church forms like the Catholic and Orthodox, or silent forms such as Quaker practice — the very traditional forms that the mega-mall churches claimed were near death because of their lack of “seeker sensitivity” and “current relevance.”

Perhaps they are attractive partially because they are bigger than America (or their headquartering countries) and more representative of the Church Universal.

I believe it’s because people find in the forms, the Eucharist, the silence, the communal space — a connection beyond great dogma, sincere patriotism, and careful right practices to an awareness of Divine presence itself.

Please feel free to help me keep seeking.  Back to Frank Schaeffer’s book.

peace

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Have been thinking about the lesson Steve taught at a previous missions weekend about Cornelius, Peter, the vision of the sheet, the Gospel, the conversion, and the reaction of the church. I learned so much that day, that continues to make more and more sense in light of what I am learning now.

I used it for my devotional in today’s class on Standards Based Differentiated Instruction.

Simon Peter knew the Standards!! He even argues with God as if this is a test he will pass by staying true to the scriptural standards.  But God shows up and reveals a new standard, love and acceptance for all.

He goes and shares the knowledge of his own story and experience with non-Christians who are already God followers, but whom he has been taught his whole life to consider too unclean to visit. And he and those with him see them filled with the Spirit of God. Then, the real rub is that criticism comes from the Church and Peter has to convince them he did not commit a horrible act by visiting with, preaching for, and baptizing these folks who already loved God!

It just brings me up short. Who are the people we (the people I) still consider unclean? Which laws of the Old Testament (or even the New) might God be lowering on a sheet to say, “Quit clinging to these and go love who I love?”  I am sure God is at least saying, “Your interpretation of my Word, is not my Word.  Give it up and do what I am doing.”
peace

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I have to agree I have felt closer to God sitting with a sincere young Muslim girl observing Ramadan, having a beer with Sam, talking with my now departed atheist friend John Elliot who accepted the holiness of being made of the stuff of his farm and resting comfortably in the belief than when he passed he would return to that soil and life would continue, or standing on the Wall at night as Arlo would say, “Just bringing my own being there.”

I guess there are three or four things that keep some grace in my conversation about the modern American church in this postmodern world; good friends still there who are sincere but not yet ready to search for something better, my belief that God claims the Church as His own and intends to claim her as a bride despite all her current faults, and not least — my memories of having been a big part of the problem, and my own Spirit fed willingness to remain forever “uncertain” as I learn to enjoy the mystery and the dance of trusting God without having to know it all.

I certainly do not want to stand before God in some future judgment today, or present awareness of the Spirit, and answer for participating in spreading a false image of a very True God.

peace

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I was finally at church last Sunday and the pastor was going through the various people who were present at the cross.  He finally mentioned the women, but used them as examples of those who watched without hope.  I went back and read the accounts of each gospel and I do not see his justification.  Perhaps it fit his sermon purposes.  Perhaps it was the perpetual negative image of women that caused him to cast them as there but in a negative way.

I see the women at the cross as one of the many reversals of Easter.  Much of the Easter story is clear plot reversal of the story of the fall.  Man chooses to become like God — God chooses to become man.  We choose to follow our own will, the God/man Jesus issues the divine fiat in the Garden.  And in the original, the woman is lured first (a fact long used and abused by the male dominated church) then here at Easter the men flee and the women stand, stay with Jesus to the end (a loyalty seldom emphasized in the church).  But, the truth is that in the age of the church it will often be the women who stand, who observe and ponder, who keep faith while the male dominated leadership runs, fights, conquers, sells, and pronounces.

This Easter, part of my contemplation is the faces of the women standing at the cross after the future apostles have fled.

peace

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Strange that while I have been off work I have read two books on forgiving acts that seem unforgivable, one by Volf with a broad theological and philosophical treatment and one by Gobodo-Madikizela that is anecdotal.  I ordered one.  My wife bought the other.  Both were selected before the events of the last long week.

All of the hurdles have been crossed except for this one: how do you deal with a daughter who seems to have totally changed from the child you raised?  Where does a person lose empathy for the results of their acts on others?  How does a dearly loved child turn on you in the most vicious ways and then act like nothing happened?  Can she really believe the unbelievable?  Is there a serious internal problem, or just teenage turmoil?  Maybe a doctor’s visit today will have some answers.

One thing I know, the timing of two accounts of how the cross brings us to the ability to forgive what we could never have imagined, is NO accident.  I need them both.  No academic exercise here today.  We are full force into reality of faith and life on this chaotic mud ball!  Time for faith to work.  Time for forgiveness to be real.  Time to find healing and a healthy path forward.  There are no alternatives.

peace

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first period, teaching math, my cellphone rings, screaming, only screaming on the other end.  Sounds like one of my daughters.  Finally able to hear “crashed and can’t get out.”  Finally able to find out that she has crashed hard enough to be stuck in the car about two blocks from school.  Frantic arrangement of coverage and fly up there to see emergency workers everywhere, another lady standing outside her smashed car, my daughter sitting inside my crumpled 96 RAV4.  Then taking too long to make sure police have everything they need and wrecker knows where to go, rushing downtown (nearest hospital not on our insurance, close by one that is on insurance is not a trauma center) to find daughter who left on a back board, made to stop at desk and fill out registration and insurance forms, then wait in lobby for permission to go back, finally find her sitting in exam room with neck brace removed waiting to go for X Rays and MRI, bruises already turning colors on her elbow and knee…

Looks like everyone is OK today.  Still waiting to hear if both cars are totaled.  But, daughter doing amazingly well for the force of the hit, only has bruises and sprains and is going back to work tomorrow.  (Had me take her by work before pharmacy for pain meds to give a birthday present to a little boy who just lost his grandmother!)  Went to repair shop to clean out the car and it looks even worse than at crash scene — broken inside and out from force of hit, I want to throw up again thinking about how close she came.

Meanwhile my kids do NOT behave at school for my other daughter who rushed in to cover for me (she is excellent subbing, it was just too much for them with me already missing days for illness and then the frightening excitement of it all) and I spend all day today trying to get them going again.

Have finished a couple months of antibiotics and still feel horrible.  See the ENT tomorrow to get rec on whether its time for sinus surgery even though I have been told to consider dying first.

Mom says she is in bed most of the time now.  I haven’t been out there since the holidays both because of schedule and my own lousy winter health.  I know why her parents headed for Brownsville, TX every winter!

Every daughter struggling to deal with what life is currently offering.  One who had wreck has no health insurance now, no car, and after reporting that she blacked out before the wreck and a court date coming up, maybe no license.  None of them has a full time job with a living wage or acceptable benefits.  Youngest daughter’s high school still not safe, but she has another year to go…

I would really like to see one of these know-it-all, so sure how life and faith work, evangelical mega preachers TRY to do a reasonable sermon on what happens when Jesus appears to roll over and go back to sleep, (or worse yet –hit you over the head for bothering Him), while the boat goes right on under!  There are days when none of the bumper sticker easy truisms are sufficient.  There are days when an honest soul just has to say like CS Lewis, “I am afraid there IS a God and that I do not like Him.”  Not said as a blasphemy but as a deepest fear of the soul that seeks to know Truth, not be sold soap.  Ask Paul, sometimes the message is the shore is just ahead, sometimes the ship goes down, sometimes you escape in a basket, sometimes you are beaten and left for dead.

Yesterday, it felt like my boat went to the bottom.  But, we’re all still here and remarkably well considering.  Wonder if Jesus can recognize worship in singing along with the Beatles, “We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow…”  Under water but hanging on.

peace

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