The Spirit of Waste

"The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works." Ps. 145:9

I lay quiet this afternoon and in my mind I wandered through what felt like disconnection with the world. I could see it all but could not find why anything I saw mattered. It was all blah. I was troubled as this seems wrong. Then I saw that there is only emptiness when the Lord is not present. The rooms are dull. Until He joins us in them. Then, his attention, his belief in us make the spaces warm and trustworthy. He actually cares for each thing — tender toward all he has made. And this humanity, this earth, is a 'particular affection'; Jesus being the "pudding" of the proof. In the backdrop of His concern, our daily human meet and greets rise into distinguished events. We, our earth and human realm, don’t have to be all there is to be desirable and beloved -- we may be the smallest part of the universe for all we know, or our universe may be the smallest fragment of whatever else there is. But Jesus, the part of God that is like us (while the rest of Him is not), puts familiarly human arms around this 'particular affection' in case we forgot.

But a “spirit of waste” has sometime entered in. Perhaps it takes advantage of a bruise, a loss, a time when we gave up our faith in the face of pride or pain.  A malicious mindset, intentioned against God’s love of people. It creates disillusionment, isolation and diminishes us until we imagine, falsely, that we are hapless matter heaped here and there. We get used to mockery. What does it matter what we do, whether we cook dinner tonight or decide one day to not come home?  I think it can come where the Lord is not present and disorients us, or at least me. So that I travel long seasons disconnected and live partial -- suffering from, yet largely unaware of, soundless melancholy. 

So come, Lord of the human race, and banish this wasteful thing, that dully loops in our mind; like the reprogrammed security camera in a Hollywood jewelry heist. Instead, revitalize us. Let the goodness we were made for, and made of, unmask mere entertainment. What You have made, each family laughing over their simple jokes, each afternoon window brimming with neighborhood noise —  they were created for joy and treasure. Though we are small, we are not tedious to You. Fill our streets, and cars and offices, and marriage beds and hiking paths and sports fields. Welcome, Jesus.  Fill our throats and stomachs and songs and studies. Light of creation and invention. Genius and Joy, we are Your own. "The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it." Amen.

A Day Out of Time

This day. Full. I watch the blessing spill over and can’t catch it all. A bit frustrated, I wonder if I should try harder. How? So I write.

Less than 24 hours ago we were all preparing for a major hurricane to hit our islands. We stacked our gallons of water and canned beans, dismantled the trampoline and took house photos for future insurance claims. Schools were closed and many grocery store shelves were emptied.

Eerily apocalyptic. But last evening, by the intervention of the “high shear winds”, as the weather people called them, the force of this dark system was suddenly dissolved even as it approached. Ah! Tell me there’s not a metaphysical truth involved. I envision the protective intervention of angels directed to our petitioned defense. But even without a gloriously mysterious narrative, I feel the sigh of relief. Now our whole community is living in what feels like the “day after Thanksgiving” but without the stress of shopping, of distracting and insistent options. Like a day taken out of time, a holy interruption of Chronos. Ironically, impending destruction makes us all hold our breath. And the consequent deep sigh of relief is fodder for better focus. For breathing slower. 

Magic Words

Expecto Patronum! Duckliflors! Potterheads may recognize these crucial spells for overcoming dark forces. (The first taps one's deepest place of joy to render a protective force and the second turns the target into a duck.) They are fun to say, especially when dramatically lunging with wooden chopsticks.

Words? How flimsy. What can they possibly do? You know, better to fear sticks and stones, right? Actually, ancient writ instructs: "Life and death are in the power of the tongue."  The Genesis creation story passes down that light, heaven and earth, finger, toes, chipmunks and all that followed was spoken into being. When describing the savior of the world, the Gospel of John calls Christ: The Word.

I believe in magic words, in that the Maker's creative verbosity is still lodged in us. Believe it or not. Here are some words I'm found to work. "I'm sorry." "Thank you." "I was wrong." "Wait." "I love you."

Too simple? Try saying them. Or worse, try not saying them. Worlds form and worlds collapse. People wait all their lives to hear something, and individuals and family lines perish for the lack of it. You are a wizard. Of dark or light. Of healing or hurt. Little do you know, but the word you say to others, may be the one that transforms you.

Taking off the stinking slipper

A close encounter with God, ultimately means a close encounter with ourselves. And maybe not surprisingly, it's this latter meeting that may intimidate us the more. Because we remember what's there. And maybe worse, what's not there.

We may be terrified by the general sensation of intimacy and revelation, particularly if in the conveniently buried parts of ourselves, we carry an ID card, of sorts, of avert-the-eyes, shrink-and-clench shame. After finding them hiding in the garden, post-forbidden fruit, God said to Adam and Eve, "how come you're now embarrassed about your bodies?" After all, A&E were running around naked for who knows how long, having a great time. The shame didn't come from God or from their created state; vulnerability about all we are doesn't have to bring shame.  But shame was the silent partner in the sin that snared 'em. 

Shame is a self judgement, a giant, ugly bleeping thing that is tied around our neck. It is opportunistic, taking advantage of any convenient sin around you; not just your own. Many of us bear shame that came to us as little kids through adult messes around us. It's hard to get rid of.

A man at the dog park recently told me how he taught his puppy to stop chewing his rubber slippers. He took the one she chewed and fitted it over her head so that it was tight around her neck and couldn't come off and she had to wear it around all day; after that she wouldn't come anywhere near slippers.

I don't think shame works in the same way although some religious types imagine it does; rather, I think shame gets noosed around our neck when we chew on sin and God actually wants us to come to him and let him take the stinking, aggravating slipper off. I don't know if we are as smart as the dog to connect the shame to the sin; we tend to just ingest that we ourselves are giant, ugly bleeping things and we might as well do crap to ourselves and others (sin) since we have such little worth. The truly grave consequence of Adam and Eve's sin was that death entered humanity; but shame is the haunting pre-stench of that rot. And both sin and shame work cruelly to separate us from the kindness of our God.

This is why the good news of Jesus is all that. He has not only closed the dripping maw of eternal death with his own beautiful, immortal life but he has radically and kindly lifted us by the chin to say "Neither do I condemn you. Have peace." Jesus, motivated by the joy of our rescue, himself "scorned the shame" of the cross (Heb 12.2), and uprose against all mortal gravities, taking us with him to sit in the Father's perfect favor. He wore our skin and bones as if to say to us in the hearing of all the universe, angels and demons, defenders and accusers alike: "See, I'm not in the least ashamed of YOU. I really LIKE you. In fact, I AM now LIKE you. You have nothing to fear."

Jesus approaches us without hesitation. He grabs us warmly by the arms and says, "Come into the great house, I have so much for you but we can talk on the way." He is not big on prepping us to be "just so" before he brings us home. We come into the Father's blindingly good presence with sandy feet and not knowing which fork to use first, and it's okay because we're beloved friends that His son just brought home from the neighborhood.

Don't run. You are already known beyond your knowing. And you have been aggressively sought after for true love's sake. The cost has been no barrier to him because His affection is beyond your human reason. Let it be so; to insist on human reason at this point would be the saddest and deadliest poison of pride, the devil's last and trusted device. If we trade our "oh hell, it's just not possible for ME" for "I would believe", Jesus will restore to us the most beautiful glory of vulnerability that ever graced Eden: innocence. As strong as the One it leans on, fertile in its power, and untroubled in its peace.

So then, when you are invited to come close in your heart and encounter God, give your shy soul's hope a chance and say to both God and yourself, "Ok, I'm coming."

Efficient vs Loving

"By worshiping efficiency, the human race has achieved the highest level of efficiency in history, but how much have we grown in love?" Gerald May

The word breathes silent

Everything spills out these cupboards, so much of so little.

Desires labeled and retrieved, deafening clicks.

Screens burning with news from the long age of man.

Surfeit, sickly, noisy… still hungry. Still scraping.

Shake off the world-fury -- its claws retract reluctant

To the stronghold of still, I stumble;

mercy meets me on the floorboards.

Here no eloquence but gravity,

no spin but the kind creep of day.

The word breathes silent and winks at me, "okay".

Return the uneven songs,

running past the kitchen door,

up the rough-barked limbs,

blinking with baby eyes at the redwood ceilings.

Return the echoes,

shimmer songs of planet paths,

up the pressureless heights of affection and wisdom,

where you threw the breath of life into us, hard as a baseball to a glove.

And I coughed. And your likeness flew out like spark. Unsteady but unmistakeable.

And the adversary ground his teeth.

Sing again. Word of stars, word of flesh. No one hears but everything arrives.

What I Can Learn from Judas

Judas was a disappointed follower of Jesus. Jesus did not do what he had pinned his hopes on him doing. He wasn't a casual disciple, but a zealot for the restoration of his oppressed nation; to some he would have been a hero. He no doubt was one of Jesus' tight gang, doing crazy miracles, getting his mind blown by his proximity to Someone with massive stage presence. But I think Judas ultimately required the exchanges of power that show tangible advancement; perhaps this is why he took money from the poor box, and why in his frustration he sold Jesus for gold. It was too much for him to wait for a kingdom that seems to work ploddingly and frustratingly through inglorious moments of mercy among the least remarkable in the crowd. Not how he wanted to spend his valuable life. What cuts close to home is the narrow place between passionate hope and passionate bitterness. The more deeply I care and invest, the more vindictive I can become. Only one of the Twelve could betray with a kiss. This is all the more reason to practice examining if I am following Jesus for who he is or Jesus for who I want him to be.