This Body of Death

(Warning: Lot’s of So’s in this piece, so turn off your inner editor!)

I have always believed in life after life; eternal life if you will, or an afterlife. Even before I was able to put it all together I believed there was something beyond our veiled vision, beyond this mortal struggle. ‘Course I wouldn’t have said it that way.  I don’t remember when I came to the realization that is talked about in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that God had set eternity in the hearts of men, but I do remember driving home late at night when I was sixteen.  See, I often wondered, and still do, about how we process information and how we are sure of our reality and the environment  and people around us. (I know there are a lot of three dollar words in philosophy for what I just said, but I was sixteen, and most folks don’t know those words so if your thinking this: get off yer high horse!) Okay, back to our blog.  I have always believed in an afterlife because we don’t process anything in real time.  Every thing is processed a nanosecond after it is experienced so it made sense to me then, and still does, that every thought and reaction we have to our environment is already a memory while we are experiencing them.  So I’d be driving down the road, really sleepy, late at night, thinking, “I wonder if I am going to die in a car accident tonight.”

So your thinking WT-? (in deference to my easily language offended readers )  Your thinking about death at sixteen? Yep. More on that later.  Anyway it occurred to me that if I was dead I couldn’t remember thinking those thoughts because I would be dead, so as long as I was aware of what was happening and experiencing the drive, (the music, the wind, my powerful machine of a ‘74 Beetle), I couldn’t have died in the next moment, or I wouldn’t remember what I was thinking/experiencing/remembering.  Then I thought to myself, wait that can’t be right because eventually everyone dies, and that would mean that we, based on my thought process, would be incapable of experiencing/knowing/remembering anything. But we do! At least that’s what observation says, several post-modern philosophists notwithstanding.  So I remember therefore I live.  So one night I chewed on this thought for a while and I felt like I was standing on a precipice at the edge of everything, I seriously had an onset of emotional/spiritual vertigo, and I knew, we don’t die, not the part of us that is us, the soul or spirit or whatever word you like, it goes on forever, like the Tom Petty song, like a diamond….

So we live forever. But some of us don’t live now.  So I should probably say we exist forever.  We choose the circumstances of that existence. Don’t panic, my non-believing friends, I’m not going to preach that sermon right now. Suffice it to say that the truth of that choice is evident in every religion so I believe that proves the truth of it and that is a great reason for you to become a seeker of spiritual truth if you are not already.   But we live in a constant struggle between the truth of our life and the the fact of our physical death.

What physics calls the second law of thermodynamics, Christians call The Curse.  Basically, everything is descending into a state of non-existence because the system is broken. (does anyone dispute that brokenness?) Christians say we broke it.  Ecologists say we broke it. Most philosophers now say, we broke it, or at the very least we are so much a part of the brokeness that the whole thing is meaningless anyway.  Our bodies are dying.  They long for death.  Think about sleeping, if you can’t sleep you want to. We crave that timeless cessation of thought, feeling, and action. We crawl from our womb/shroud every morning reluctantly and painfully as we get older and long for the deep, dark comfort of sleep at the end of the day.  Children, at heart or otherwise, fight sleep to the end of their limit, but the body wins and pulls them into the placid, deep places of slumber.  But the struggle is, we know we are meant to be awake!

The life that burns within us despises that darkness, that’s why children fight sleep, they know, they will miss something important if they surrender.  Now sleeping is just a metaphor, but you knew that.  Those of us that are fortunate enough to live in the knowledge and new life that is offered to us, find ways to let that life shine out through the cracks of their dying husks, but still we struggle.  Scripture says it this way: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. ⁸We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. ¹⁰We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. ¹¹For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. ¹²So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.” II Corinthians 4:7-12 (passage in context here).  

So then, dear reader, here’s the thing. Life is hard. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes its worse than that and we just want to throw up our hands and surrender.  But you are made of sterner stuff.  The scientist and the preacher both believe we are made of stardust, but even that concept belittles the true nature of ourselves.  We are incredibly and wonderfully alive on a spiritual level that defies explanation, and that fact lets us transcend our circumstances. We are over-comers.  We are fearfully and wonderfully “made” no matter how you believe. But note this, I believe, and many like me do as well, that there is an eternal and all-powerful God, who loves us completely.  Maybe you have trouble with that concept, that’s fine I’d love to have a dialogue with you about it, even if we disagree.  But at the least know this, you can survive, you are.  You are capable of so much, don’t give up.  Cling to the light within  you. As Dylan Thomas wrote, “Rage against the dying of the light!” And know, even in your rage, that the light never dies.

Of Heroes and Greatness

I have a fatal flaw.

I am led to believe that despite the rather dark moniker of ‘fatal flaw’ that it may actually be a good thing.  I know, I know, how could anything ‘fatal’ be a good thing?  Well, in my understanding of heroic literature there is this concept that every great hero has a fatal flaw, something that will be his undoing or his greatest challenge or weakness.  Think Superman and Kryptonite, or more appropriately, the much celebrated heel of Achilles.  Of course those are both physical manifestations.  Achilles flaw was actually his hubris, Superman’s? I’ll leave that for some of my more graphic literature minded people.    It remains, however, that every great hero has his weakness as sure as every rose has its thorn.  So when I say I have a fatal flaw I am saying that i believe myself to be a great hero.

Heh.  Anybody out there laughing aloud?

My flaw? Well, as a side note I’ll tell you, and it’s not procrastination, that’s a symptom.   My fatal flaw is a strong desire to avoid anything I consider tedious.  It’s like a really specialized brand of sloth, call it circumstantial sloth, or subjective sloth.  Basically if I find it boring i don’t do it, or I put it off.  Then, if it’s important (most things are that need doing), I wait until it comes to a point of crisis before I deal with it and voila, fatality!  Yeah, I know, pretty bad.  I despise myslef for it sometimes, because sometimes it hurts more than just me.  And it certainly has held me back in life because some things can’t be done well at the last minute.  So, somone might say, fix it. *sigh* I have tried.  I have battled, it’s tough for whatever reason.  If I don’t stay constantly vigilant in this area then it happens, I fall back into it, I hate it.  If you really don’t understand something you have a lot of trouble beating, then I submit to you that you may know your flaw also.  Which brings me to the point of this meditation.  Everyone carries a fatal flaw.

Everyone has a weakness that hold them back, as I think through my friends I can recognize our flaws, every one.  That has no real effect on me, people withouth faults are useless because of their absolute obtuseness.  In other words, they must have faults, they just don’t admit them. Useless; at least as friends.  But let me move off in the direction I want to go.  If it’s true that everyone is fatally flawed (what the Bible calls sinners) then, if our observations of heroic literature is true, it stand to reason that everyone has greatness within them; greatness that their flaws are keeping them from apprehending (what the bible calls the curse or the Fall of Man). 

I used to play a role-playing game called In Nomine.  Basically the players took on the roles of Angels and Demons in the war for the souls of man.  The basic premise of the war was that every human has within them a fate and a destiny. The destiny is the possible outcome of the persons life if they make good, unselfish choices, in alignment with the will of Heaven.  The fate of a human is the opposite, their theoretical outcome if they make choices that are evil and selfish, more in alignment with the will of Hell.  the Angels and Demons fought over each persons fate and destiny, it was very cool.  Buried there is a truth of God.

Each of you carries within yourself the seeds of greatness.  Each of you is a hero-in-waiting.  You see if the things I believe about God are true, that He planned and created each of us, that He is good and loving and just, that He sent His Son to redeem us from our selfishness (sin); then it becomes necessarily true that His fingerprints are all over us and that His blood and DNA if you will, flow through our veins.  That means that we are people with great destinies.  Made of stardust, carrying the blood of God in our hearts and souls, we walk through life unaware of the greatness that we carry, the purpose, the destiny.  And as we make small selfish choices it diminishes us as it diminishes HIm.  This is the essence and dark sadness of sin-a life led to please yourself.  We miss so much because we do not pursue the hero in our hearts and minds, and when we do pursue him/her, we pursue incorrectly and with motive foul.

If you are blessed enough to be around children you have already seen this.  Kids carry their great heroic spirit near the skin where it can be seen as they, on many occasions, practice absolute altruism and pretend to stand in the gap against all odds.   Kids know. We’ve forgotten.  If you can accept it, if you can find your way clear to look for the hero inside of you, who knows what you will find, joy? Life? Happiness? Fulfillment of purpose?  Maybe even God Himself.

Simple

I’ve been thinking about our church.  The Well.

Now, I like our church very much, but lately, things have been a bit, I don’t know, slow maybe.  I know every church goes through seasons and cycles but when things aren’t right, it’s my job to think about them, pray about them and maybe, just maybe, come up with the answer we need.  Well, in my current thinking about the church I may have discovered a problem.

When we started The Well, we were resplendent with buzz-words and labels, mostly from others but also from ourselves.  Words like emergent or emerging, post-modern, alternative, relevant et cetera, rolled off of our tongues and pens.  We had many great ideas and they are still great ideas but here’s a fact.  At The Well we are simple people, there’s not a lot of posturing or dissimilation that goes on; and we’re really, really laid back.  In fact, I think if we could have church lying around we would, but the floors are hardwood at the Carpenter’s Hall where we meet.  We start at some semblance of a certain time because we have to publish a start time so visitor’s aren’t completely lost.  I think maybe we are trying to0 hard to be our ideas and not trying to just, well, be.

You see, I realized pretty early on that starting a new effective church was going to require more than just a change in methodology, it required a change in theology.  Now I am Southern Baptist in background and, for the most part, have had very few problems with that belief system except for this observation.  For the past few decades,  Southern Baptists have wandered away from their actual theology and let tradition and fear drive them into becoming a Religion, or an Institution, run by a Bureaucracy. (Can you hear the capital letters?)   It’s this return to a real theology, undiluted by Religious Law, that we need.

Now as I said, we’re a pretty simple group, down to earth, open, straightforward.  We require, as does God, a simple theology so that we can just be.  We require a simple church where we can just serve the Risen Christ.  The whole of our formula for expanding our church and it’s influence comes down to these few things.

Jesus. People. Church. Simple.

There is no orthodoxy, there is no liturgy, there is no emerging, there is no post-modern, there is only

Christ and Him crucified.

Love God. Love People.

God loves you and so do I.

When I Was a Captain: A Musing On Life

When I was a Captain of a ship out at sea.  Life was so simple.

It was a long time ago, 1810 or 11, hard to remember now.  She was a merchantman, my ship, my life, with tall beautiful masts full of sail and a sharp prow that divided the sea before us like a knife.  She was a gift from my father who told me to outfit her, pick out the best crew that I could find and begin my voyage.  He also told me to treat her right, like she was a princess.  We named her Princess Freedom.

We found a niche carrying explorer’s and adventurer’s to places other captains were unwilling to go and we set sail again and again, never fearing for the lack of a foreseeable destination, always reaching beyond the horizon, as long as there was a ’star to steer by.’ Certainly there were long weeks and months as we searched for some heretofore unheard of island or notation on a chart from the ancient past.  Certainly there were days we went hungry or thirsty or in despair as we languished in the sun or the storms.  But there was always the goal, the horizon, the star, just out of sight, just out of reckoning. So it was simple.

When the waves battered our Princess we held her tight for her sake and ours.  When pirates attacked us, we fought them off with a ferocity known only by those who fight for their freedom.  When dissension threatened us below decks we did everything in our power to reconcile because a divided ship is a dead ship.

And when the doldrums came and we lost the wind.  We sat there.  Dwindling in a desert of ocean, we towed and rowed and hoped and prayed for the wind to return; and we watched for it’s return, rejoicing to see the moving clouds, the rising swell of the ocean and I enjoined all hands to heed my call, for the time was now.  Our Princess would rise up then, on the breast of the wind and sing through the water like one of Mozart’s themes, like da Vinci’s dreams!

And at the end of every story, she brought us home again.

When I was a captain, life was simple.

On Blogging: Read This First

It was G.K. Chesterton who mused in the preface to his great book Orthodoxy that writing a book was inherently arrogant as it required you to make a decision that people actually wanted to read your words and that you had a message worth other peoples time.  I suppose that blogging (as well as preaching) fits that same description.  So I am taking on the task of using an inherently arrogant vehicle to deliver and neccesarily humble message.  Ironic.

It will be made simpler by the fact that I intend these musings to be oriented towards the spiritual, driven by my work with my people at The Well, and inspired by the Spirit of God, or whatever you believe inspires me if you are not of the same mindset.

On that note, when I was a kid I used to sit in the back of the car on long road trips and narrate long, usually Space Opera, stories into my battery operated cassette recorder and then play them back for my enjoyment and my incredibly indulgent parents amusement.  I’d like to copy the philosophy of the tape recorder as I blog and preach and whatever else I do.  I just want to record the words I hear and play them back for you.  Then perhaps, without taking credit for what I do , I can put forth some true thoughts and ideas without succumbing to the aforementioned arrogance.

I hope you find whatever you were looking for when you stumbled on these scratchings.  If not, I hope you find a new treasure to drive your search.

Rain

As I sit here this morning at Dominican Joe’s, I can look out the front window and watch the rain fall down. The day is a slick silver gray with it’s own rhythm and melody and I am thankful, as I should be, for the rain that we have needed for so long. It needs to continue, despite the disruption that it represents, it’s been a long dry spell.

Thinking about the drought, I wonder what it takes to end one. How much rain is enough rain? How much do we need to restore us to a green spring, when the time is full for vernal awakening? Then I think about church; our church. What will make us grow? What kind of rain is needed to make us grow? Is it a question of rain? What do we need to do? What is God waiting for? Pray for rain.

Musings on Life Begun

So my wife and I are now reponsible for four lives brought into the world; four new springs that will water the world; four new roads that are as yet unmade, untravelled, uncharted. All of my children, including the new guy, were born into this world through blood and pain, screaming at the loss of comfort and security, begun in passion and with passion arriving. All of my children are very different from each other, with their own special light and life that marks them as indidvidual humans in a sea of humanity. And I am wondering, wondering……..where did we go so wrong?

My children wake up every day in adventure and discovery mode and even when they feel the need for structure and home, as we all do, it’s just so they can recharge their batteries and set off again. It’s like living with Lewis and Clark, Magellan, Columbus, take your pick. Injury is a brief stop for a band-aid, (Anna thinks they are pretty!) Anger is fast, pure, and forgotten (MG screams like a panther!). Love is every moment of every day (Becket will hit you or hug you and it still means, ‘I love you!’). They trust those they love (well, Gideon has no choice right now!).

Why do we let go of these traits? Why can’t we recognize that children are books of information on how to live our lives? When did we forget who we were?

You know who my children really are?
Hermione Granger
Batman
Amelia Earhardt
and
Well, whoever Gideon is……….

Who is it that we were supposed to be that we left lying in a dress up box because we were too afraid, or too grown up, or too sensible?

W.C. Fields once said that anyone who hated dogs and kids couldn’t be that bad……

W.C. Fields was a daft drunk.

God of the Spider House

It’s hot today. I’m sitting outside of Spider House, waiting for a friend and thought I would share the moment with you, because it’s a moment.

The courtyard at Spider House is unique. Tiled and full of old lawn furniture and picnic tables. There is statuary and greenery but everything is thrown together, like the place was designed by a garage sale artist. The the huge tree, (elm?) that stands sentinel over this area sports bamboo wind chimes and Christmas lights nonchalantly, as if they were his natural fruit. Just as the young student, finishing his breakfast and smoking his cigarette is reading Steinbeck, like it was as natural as the summer heat; like everyone reads Steinbeck.

There is an older guy close by with a long gray ponytail, scratching his way through the classifieds, obviously, despondently, seeking a few dollars of employment. There is a dog. Well, it is Austin!

There are lovers of various types, deeply involved in their own worlds. There are people just…..here…..waiting for something. And many humming computers with pilots flying them through work and waste. And there is one more thing…….

God is here.

In this jumbled mess of life and liberty; between the smiling lovers and the furrowed speakers; between the courtyard and the porch; between the porch and the caffeine altar. In all this beautiful, thrown together, beauty is God. He makes this space holy, and I find His holiness within this moment.

To my left is a bird bath with a broken statue in it. The statue used to be a ship’s pilot, standing by the wheel of his vessel. Now the wheel is broken and the pilot’s head is missing. So often does life make us feel this, that I have no direction, or vision, or even a head to turn and look and think. But here, in this holiness, he still stands tall, he remains a thing of beauty in this jumble, who stands with dignity, grasping the ruined wheel, saved by grace and waiting for full restoration. Yes, there is no doubt, God is here.

He creates and breaks and recreates. He rescues, redeems and restores. By His blood, he collects all of us broken, cast-off, castaways in the garden of His delight and makes us beautiful peoples, statues, trees, lights, lovers, searchers, readers, wasters, waiters, all of us.

This is a holy place if you can see it.

Spider House, cafe, bar, coffee house:

God is here.

Masked

The Stranger

Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They’re the faces of the strangerBut we love to try them on

Well we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?

So, I’m thinking I must have mis-communicated something the other day while I was preaching. I know what I did, my word choices led to a misunderstanding of the point I was trying to make. So let me put it another way.

People wear masks.

Sometimes we are forced to, most times it is a choice.

Some people put on the ‘wise’ mask or the ’smart’ mask so people don’t know what is really happening. Some people wear the ‘introvert’ or frankly, the ‘extrovert’ mask to hide their insecurities or self-loathing. Some folks choose ‘holiness’ as a mask to cover what they really are. Many of us pretend to be stoic and strong, many of us pretend to be weak. It just depends on the situation.

I’d like to believe that folks on their spiritual journey, especially followers of Jesus Christ, would be in the process of becoming more and more themselves, less concerned with the opinions and of the World around them (I don’t mean in terms of holiness!), and more concerned with the wholeness of their walk; the desire to be the same person, inside and out. I think that’s the best place to be. Most of the Jesus folk that I have the privilege of knowing are somewhere in that transition, thanks to the work of the Divine (the Holy Spirit in this case), but there is a catch, and that’s where Sunday’s sermon crossed with this topic.

The one requirement for spiritual growth is brokenness; admission of failure, admission of need, admission of wrong-doing. Our pretensions and protestations of our own holiness and self-sufficiency hold us back from real growth. We first come to Christ saying, “I can’t make it on my own,” and every step after that is based on a working knowledge of the adjustments (repentance) I need to make in my life to Jesus as our master, teacher, sensei…….Lord. Therefore, self-honesty is a cornerstone ethic of our walk. I don’t mean to say that you look at yourself and just see how horrible you are, you also need to see the good that God is making you into, but there can be no compromise or ignoring of the things in your life that need to change. In this case, I am specifically talking about the ‘mask’ of religion that many of us wear to hide where we are with Jesus. But the ‘masks’ of self-deceptive attitudes and beliefs must be thrown away.

Here’s the bright sun shinging through. God will help you throw down falsehood and pretension, but it is He, not you, that enacts real change in you. So the drive should be towards surrender to God and allowing Him to speak His words into your heart, not towards behavior modification.

A Hand, Frozen to a Sword

I actually wrote this blog entry last year but the timing was wrong, as were my motives to publish it. Today, however, is the day. I will blog again this week but, feel free to type me to death.

Okay, here goes. Not sure about this one but, a little history lesson is in order.I was born the second time in June of 1976. I was nine years old. By the time I reached Junior High I had already been trained for ‘evangelism,’ that is, the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I had attended adult classes in ’sharing’ at my church because the kid classes were, well, too kiddish, (this problem would affect my later ministry in many ways.) So, I was ready to win converts. Interestingly enough, I never felt like it was something I was ’supposed’ to do. I just knew that my friend Jesus needed more friends, and that I didn’t want anyone to go to hell and be separated from Him. It never would have occured to me to save everyone, ’cause I didn’t even know everyone, but somehow, God worked it into my pre-adolescent head that everyone I could bring to Him was one more rescued from life and death without Him.

Now, it probably should be stated here that I am not a gifted evangelist, I just loved Jesus and people and wanted them together, like a peanut butter/chocalate thing; and the truth is, I was turned down or rejected as many times. or more, than I was ’successful.’ But some, over time, came to know Christ through my simple message of love and acceptance and despite my often sin-stained life.

During my not so epic journey through junior high, three different schools, I learned about, and became a sold-out geek for role-playing games in general and Dungeons and Dragons in specific. It expanded my community, increased my vocabulary and decision making ability and introduced me to a group of people that were as broken and needy as any I would ever meet. I had been involved in theatre since I was 6 or seven so I was already prepared for the bizarre group of people I would meet. Through this hobby, I was able to get to know and begin to lead these young men towards light and rescue. Here I am 25 years later to tell you that, of my two original gaming groups, all but a handful are now disciples of Christ. One of those is my foster brother Stephen, whom many of you know.This has been introduction to my point. It follows hard afoot now.

Sometime during high school, the word got out that Dungeons and Dragons was a tool of Satan.Boy, was I shocked.Upon further research I found that many of these accusers had no idea what gaming was about or, even worse, had told lies, outright lies, about what we practiced or what was found in our rulebooks. Hmm.

Now, I was raised in the outskirts of the ’sub-culture’ we call the Christian ghetto, although my parents did keep a house decidely on the wall, so I had to figure out how it was that these ‘believers’ in Jesus would lie. Either money or fear, I figured out, and the damage was done. I learned that there was a form of Christianity that was more concerned with saving itself than others and I guess, after I recovered from the talespin of belief that I was in, sometime in college, I became first a dissident, and in recent years, a patriot for the cause of Christ and a reformed gospel doctrine.

My journey has been one of seeking to know Christ as Redeemer and a Friend of sinners; to understand that Holiness was about how I treated others as I proved out my love for God by loving them. My journey has been about washing the Bride and fighting fights to prove that people were worth far more than reputation; and that if I was accused of being a sinner because of my association with sinners that I was just becoming like Christ. In time, that journey has led me to this place and this time, The Well.

We are a great experiment born of a great hope and a passion for Christ, the Body and the lost. We are a try and try again project of learning failures and improvable successes. And we will find our way. But…..We will not lose sight of our goal to be different and better than where we came from.

We stand on the shoulders of sacrifice and conflict and try to reach higher and farther than we know we can on our own.We must love each other. We must learn that our differences are strengths, not fodder for warfare. We will have peace. We will be love. We will rescue, redeem and restore.

Like Eliezer, the mighty man of David, I have chosen this beanfield, and here I stand. I will swing the sword of the message that has been written into me, until my hand, frozen, no longer can relinquish it’s grip.