I have trouble remembering

I can’t remember much about her anymore.

I remember the moment when there were wisps of her life still clinging to the things she left behind. I remember sorting through her personal items after the funeral. Her toothbrush. It still smelled like toothpaste. Two weeks later I got it out again to look at it. I brought it to my nose. It no longer had the smell of toothpaste on it and like the fading memories, I struggled to remember, but I couldn’t. She wasn’t there to remind me of who she was.

I used to crash funerals for a while, after she died. I would look through the obituaries for the youngest person they had listed. One time there was a young man who had died because a police car had lost control at an intersection and run into him and his friend, while they had been driving home late one night. The movies taught me what to wear. I bought a black skirt a black hat and black sunglasses...black stockings and black shoes. I went to the cemetery and stood there among the mourners. The couple behind me dressed to the T in black, dark shades covering their eyes. They talked under their breath about the deceased’s sibling, when he burst into sobbing, as each family member left a rose on the casket. They clutched at each other. I hung onto every juicy detail.

I had to be sad. I needed to cry some more. I wished to be an ancient Hebrew mourner, where the rich would hire mourners to attend funerals of their beloved, following the procession weeping and wailing. I would have been the loudest of them all. I would have meant every bit of it.

The day we buried her, we all stood at the graveside, while the men in their Sunday straight coats and shoes shoveled dirt onto the lowered casket. There were no dark glasses to hide the tears in our eyes that day. There seemed not to be enough tears to cry the loss, so the God sent the elements to help us. First it snowed fluffy white flakes, then it rained and didn’t let up for a week. As for me, I didn’t see blue sky till late the following spring. After the mourners left, the following day, I returned to lay a solitary flower on the bare mound of brown clay carved into the green grass not yet deadened by the sleet and snow coming down. We don’t lay flowers on our graves. I came to lay mine in secret.

Last week I discovered my roommate at home on a work day. She is Jewish by heritage and Messianic by decision. It was Tish B’Av, a day designated by the Jews for mourning and fasting. The occasion, the destruction of the temple. I think I would enter full-heartedly into the mourning of the temple. We mourn the destruction of our individual earthly temples. Who mourns the disrepair of our spiritual houses of worship? Who mourns our broken families? Who mourns our society and our shattered world? No amount of mourning and wailing is enough to express the anguish we the created inflict upon God the creator. Mourn and wail when you can. And then mourn and wail some more wherever you wander on your sleepless nights. It is good to remember that we are all-together broken. And it is good to remember who can repair us.

Yes, I have trouble remembering the way things were and who she used to be.

miracle: when humankind sees God's salvation

It seems throughout every new movement of spiritual renewal or awakening there are manifestations that fulfill the word of Isaiah, which John repeated,

A voice of one calling in the desert,
Prepare the way of the Lord,
Make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in,
Every mountain and hill made low
The crooked roads shall become straight,
The rough ways smooth.
And all mankind will see God’s salvation

Yes, things will be made right and justice will be dealt out. People will become whole again. People will see God’s salvation. Yes!? Or maybe not?
Lectures, debates and articles abound on the particulars of the theologies coming from these movements. Schemas of their worldview are constructed and discussed. But digging deeper, reading the fine print, dusting off volumes brings one to imagine the theological principles and their effect on the actual historical figures. Social impact must be considered. Why am I content with only half the story? Am I afraid of what the rest might mean? To hope—would it be too much? So, I observe a renown theologian observing and recounting the history of a movement. It reminds me of the time I went through a pastor’s library and found significant amounts of books on Katherine Kuhlman and other revival and healer types. I never saw any evidence of such an influence in this pastor’s service to his community. Yet there lies the evidence, of something.

John Howard Yoder writes, in an introduction to a small volume of significant thoughts by Eberhard Arnold, concerning the Religious-Social movement within German Protestantism. Social concern and pietism are intermingled, where pietism is defined as the encounter with God that changes reality, through “prayer, guidance and miracle.” Yoder cites the ministry of Johann Cristoph Blumhardt, who was a young pastor, who in an event of grace, witnessed/assisted the freeing of a young woman from a depressive possession. “Blumhardt developed a particular pastoral ministry over the next half century which his son, Christoph Friedrich took on. Yet (in a way quite distinct from the individualistic or internalistic turn which such deliverance ministries can take)” Yes, these are Yoder’s words of evaluative commentary. It suggests he has had enough encounter and read enough Blumhardt biography and autobiography to make such evaluative commentary about extraordinary, perhaps miraculous events. Further, among the spiritual and intellectual successors of the Blumhardts is none other than Karl Barth. Kutter, also a successor of social-religious movement influenced Arnold.

Further, I’ve encountered stories like the following, in reading Wesley, Finney and Whitefield. There was a Welsh man I believe who also preached during the Great Awakening. I don’t recall his name but I do recall the account given of a young man who was raised from the dead after 2 days of prayer and weeping. The young man who had died had been close to this minister’s heart and they had ministered together. His body had been laid out in a bedroom of a house. All others had pronounced him dead, as they prepared for the usual funeral events. Yet this man of God wept and prayed over his body, rejecting all help from those who tried to convince him the young man was dead. They even tied a cord around the dead youth’s neck, forcing it into an unnatural position, supposedly to demonstrate the lifelessness of the body. After two days the young man received life back into his body. Everyone was amazed. He was fully healed of the illness he had died of but his neck troubled him for the rest of his life. Accounts like these are numerous. I ran across the account when researching Wesley. While I was doing a search for the story above, I ran into a well cited paper on miracles and other acts of grace and strange phenomenon occurring during the times of great revival.

To this I only wrinkle my brow in consternation. I’ve seen societies which follow various of these dead men’s theological legacy. Don’t these folks know if the dust was swept back entirely, amazing and shocking things would be laid bare? Could this stuff uncovered not become the material of a stand up comedy such as the number the Earl of Shaftesbury pulled in “Characteristics” mocking the Huguenot immigrants, commonly known as French Prophets?

Could it be true?

I imagine myself rallying around the next John, wearing sandals and a rough coat. I imagine entering into the words of the prophet Isaiah once again. I don’t care on iota about the nay-saying ridicules. I want to see God’s salvation. I want the straight path. I want to cash in my lot with the disheveled character who eats locust and honey. His words are like a stream in this desert.

Yoder’s quotations are from the Introduction of Eberhard Arnold’s God’s Revolution. Plough Publishing, 1997.

frustrated with church?

We've all been there, if you've ever done church for any length of time. It doesn't matter what congregation, what denomination, what new church plant, the struggle is always the same. When at first you think you've finally arrived at the perfect place, think...think again, for soon you will discover that fatal flaw. You begin to realize that perhaps it doesn't matter what they are doing and what doctrines they hold. It's a matter of call perhaps and internal cultivation within the called to environment. Here are the most excellent tips I seen on how to survive...no, rather, thrive in sandy soil of the called out environment, without doing war on the saints but instead, perfecting your own soul. An entry called, How to Survive Church, by Matt Stone.

unhooked weekends

On the weekends I rarely “log onto” my web-based communications networks. I don’t want to waste my life away looking through a shadowed screen. I have also been to my parent’s farm out in rural Minnesota frequently, where there is no wireless. There is no TV. And there is barely a cell phone signal. It all helps me focus on the real verses the virtual. This is good for me, since I as a child could daydream for hours. My imagination alone would have been enough to keep me feeling like I was participating with concrete reality. I love being connected to the World Wide Web, but I do make sure I exist apart from it.

buddhist parable on possessions

Although this is a Buddhist parable on possession of things, it is still applicable to our modern day preoccupation with money.
Call me cold-hearted but I rarely believe folks who say, "I'm broke." (I do empathize with the internal war of these situations.) However, generally truth be told it could be much worse. You just have to look around a bit and you've got something much worse materializing. People prostitute themselves the most when it comes to money and getting the things we think we need.

Releasing the Cows
(Told by Master Thich Nhat Hanh)

One day the Buddha was sitting in the wood with thirty or forty monks. They had an excellent lunch and they were enjoying the company of each other. There was a farmer passing by and the farmer was very unhappy. He asked the Buddha and the monks whether they had seen his cows passing by. The Buddha said they had not seen any cows passing by.

The farmer said, "Monks, I'm so unhappy. I have twelve cows and I don't know why they all ran away. I have also a few acres of a sesame seed plantation and the insects have eaten up everything. I suffer so much I think I am going to kill myself.

The Buddha said, "My friend, we have not seen any cows passing by here. You might like to look for them in the other direction."

So the farmer thanked him and ran away, and the Buddha turned to his monks and said, "My dear friends, you are the happiest people in the world. You don't have any cows to lose. If you have too many cows to take care of, you will be very busy.

"That is why, in order to be happy, you have to learn the art of cow releasing (laughter). You release the cows one by one. In the beginning you thought that those cows were essential to your happiness, and you tried to get more and more cows. But now you realize that cows are not really conditions for your happiness; they constitute an obstacle for your happiness. That is why you are determined to release your cows."

Oh, and for more of these look here

misunderstood concepts in forgiveness

In my daily life of talking about forgiveness and trying to live forgiveness, I run into some misconceptions. Once I had a friend get angry with me, when I talked about forgiveness with regard to a wrong done to her. She thought I was saying that what her offender had done to her was negligible or insignificant. True forgiveness does not make this claim. Another time I was preparing to travel to a distant city with a companion. My primary purpose in going was to absolve someone of the things she had done to me—to forgive her and declare her forgiven. It was such a messy situation and involved deception and numerous people, that everyone knew the story of the offense done to me. Yet even though, I had prepared myself to not bring one iota of accusation against her or her family, my companion’s father still referred to my mission as the trip where Abby’s gonna go make some heads roll. In a worldly way of thinking, I would have been entirely justified and also had the capacity to seek my revenge. But I keep correcting people’s language when they refer to this story and the time when I went to confront my friend. “No,” I say, “I went to forgive my friend and her family.” Forgiveness is not confrontation.

Yet, both of these misunderstandings occur because worldly patterns which influence us give no space for redemptive patterns of response. I was once asked, what does one do when threatened given the fight or flight response schema. I would claim there is room under the fight category for using the adrenaline of the moment to actively resist/diffuse the threat in a redemptive way. But one has to choose into the redemptive gospel first before one can respond against the brainwashed patterns we’ve been taught from the culture.

Forgiveness is not the same as confrontation or a truth seeking session. Confrontation is when there is a forceful presentation of an agenda on some other person(s). In the arena of interpersonal wrongdoings, confrontation often takes the form of one person telling another, what he/she has done wrong. The recipient can accept, reject or amend the agenda. Truth seeking sessions are times of honesty and openness when those who involved in a “situation” gather to discover the truth about their “situation.” Confrontation and truth seeking session both precede forgiveness. Additionally, confrontation sessions tend to evoke resistance, so I don't generally advise them. Instead, I prefer truth seeking sessions. They involve questions as opposed to accusations. Although questions, open-ended or not, can be interpreted from a hostile slant or even placed in hostility.

Forgiveness is not negating/making of no consequence, a wrong that has occurred. The wrong has occurred. Individuals have been affected. Nothing will change that fact. Yet it is the human response to that offending act which render the act counter-consequential or as a generative furtherance of evil. Forgiveness writes the travesty into the script and rises above the effects by actively evoking the Spirit of Christ to transform the story into his grand redemptive narrative. Anger, revenge and acts of self-defamation transform the travesty into many more travesties like a viruses host cell, which has been taken captive generating more an more evils toward the infection of many more.

The consequences of true forgiveness is the unloading of burdens, the disassociation of one’s identity from the hurts, fears and guilts associate with/attached to an action done against you, which served to damage you relationally, emotionally or physically. Forgiveness (the noun) is a miracle (the noun). Forgiving (the verb) is the active participation in extending forgiveness (the noun) toward the healing of the other and the self toward their original created order. This is a miracle.

That forgiveness is possible is a miracle. When one extends forgiveness one extends power toward actualizing a miracle.

Somebody please give me a rule of thumb to go by on the use of affect and effect.

miracle: a definition

Should be a verb, not a noun. It’s definition should be...
“the act of grace which spontaneously restores a noun or a relation toward its intended created order.”
(which means it would include the rescue of matter from entropy, according to Peter Atkins' original association of "entropy" with "disorder".)

Mark 8

Jesus feeds the 5,000 with 7 loaves and fishes.

22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?" 24 He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around." 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, "Don't go into the village."

Jesus has a discussion with his disciples about his identity and who people think he is. Likely, the word circulating about the miracles is contributive toward the commentaries on Jesus' identity. The people associated Christ with the best "miracle stories" from their history: Elijah and John the Baptist.

enjoy your summer: part 2

Let a calf suck on your fingers

one way to enjoy the summer

My brother and I went out for a ride a while back. It was the first ride I had in years. He’s married now and rides with his wife. This time we did a bit of exploring. We followed the river so we could spot his wife out rowing with her team.

I like the feel of riding because you can’t really talk, you have to feel. Feel the balance. Feel the movement. Lean into a turn. Angle your head to avoid the crashing helmets. Anticipate a lane change. This time my brother started doing this strange ducking thing, where he would get into this uncomfortable hunched position behind the short windshield. Oh, I thought, I guess he’s doing this to lessen wind resistance. So, I duck also. After the ride we had this conversation.

Him: so did you like it when I ducked?
Me: sure. Wind resistance, huh.
Him: My wife likes it when I do that so that she can see the scenery better.
Me: ???!!!!

Isn’t my brother a really nice guy. This is just one of the many little things he does to help and love everyone. Too bad I was all stuck up in the mind of performance and commodity. I suppose the shirt he wore that day didn’t help get me out of that mode much. It didn’t say, “Smell the roses along the way.” Rather it was t-shirt from his bridge class project. It had four formulas on it one of them being the stress resistance of concrete and other structural engineering formulas.

saccharine notes

He came to my door often, slipping little messages under it. It became his daily practice. One of these days I’ll have to respond I thought to myself.

The day came. I leaned on the knob preparing to open the door. I sent up a prayer and a struggle ensued. I was not willing to invite him to sit in my space just to hear him clink the change in his pocket for hours. A devious thought. Perhaps I could hang pornography on the door in an attempt to shock him into being repulsed by my door. No. No. I will not resort to sinister methods, I resolved. I must open the door and face him. I must speak to him honestly as a friend speaks with another friend.

But he would come and see that there was no one in my space with me, immediately concluding he could stay for the rest of the week. I imagined repulsing him with an argument. A list of topics fell into my left brain. I was tempted. No. No. No. I must open the door, smile and be a gracious host. I must tell him definitely and certainly how often he could come and for how long he could clink his change. This would put a stop to the energy he put into the saccharine notes under the door.

On the other hand, could this be a good thing? Sometimes there are great loyalties behind these little messages under the door. There is the possibility for an amazing friendship with someone unique and rare. Someone to watch my back. A cloudy pillow on which to rest. That would be wonderful. But the clinking change and the saccharine notes and the unnamable something behind those silly little things. What to do? No. No. There must be no more daily messages. The time and preoccupation they demand will only serve to creep into my soul. Like the repetition of half-truths, one certainly does come to believe them after hearing them like a daily mantra. The gifts. They will become a blessing. And time only time will reveal the unnamed something. Until then, certainly there will be joyful times and grace for all. Oh, but I ache for the best. The promises and notes of wisdom. The cloudy pillow on which to rest.

I open the door. There he stands with earnest stance.

Not a day later, I emerged from my space only to see little notes under every door in a hall of mirrors. The notes. They were the ones I had received. When did they begin to mass produce these? I kicked myself for the time and patience and grace I had demonstrated him. I was annoyed. I felt lied to. I had received as in earnest. I had handled with care and conscience. I should have thrown them away as one should a saccharine note. I should have filled my garbage with them as he sat before me. But the word of the Lord came to me. Yet, the one who turned water into wine spoke to me. I returned his visit. I knocked on his door. I watched for the saccharine to turn sweet.

new post

So, I've accepted a new post as the blog manager of my good friend, Robert V. Rakestraw, otherwise known as Bob or Mr. Bag Man. Feel free to wander over to his site at http://bobrakestraw.blogspot.com/
He has been my boss, my ethics professor, my confidant, adviser and bouncer off of ideas. He should have come with a warning label saying, "Caution: you will forever be changed by this man's sincerity and kindness."

pride and education

The Amish and the Mennonites are at times characterized according to their history as humble and simple folk, who during the radical reformation despite the fact that they were humble, simple unlearned peasants, spoke truth and meaning into the life of faith with surprising courage and confidence. Well, it was big enough to warrant the attention of even the highest officials of the establishment. This history follows us. I sometimes feel like I’m climbing a steep hill in keeping up with the rest of theological academia and their core interests, while maintaining the legitimacy of my own and tying it into the core of the mainstream. Yet the objective remains, establishing relevance and engaging folks toward transformation and kingdom living.

Recently, I was reminded of a former internal perspective that us simple folk have in associating higher education with pride. Granted the actuality is likely common, however, with a degree or two under my belt, I see things quite differently. Somehow I seem to have lost the pride perspective somewhere along the way and gained the realization of how little one really knows when he/she becomes “educated.” Instead, I see learning as an opportunity to interact with people both living and those who have died, leaving their thoughts and legacy behind in volumes upon a shelf. As I describe it in this way, I get this picture of bookish people sitting in a circle, in a dusty dank library, discussing ideas with the living and the dead and the not-yet-born. The dead are represented by an empty chair with a book lying open on it, while the shadowy ghostlike figure of its author hovers over and slightly behind it. People discuss his writings and his contribution and his intended meaning. Occasionally, the discussion causes the ghostly figure to wince a bit. The not-yet-born are represented by a formless white blot hovering over a chair. Few dialogue with it. Although I could imagine a said futurist deeply engaged in a private conversation with the white blot, while others ignore the oddity. Hopefully the circle breaks on occasion and these alive bookish folks dust themselves off a bit and venture into the outdoors to influence and change a few things.

misplaced identity

I’ve been reading some Eberhard Arnold and found some food for thought and implementation, in his wisdom on forgiveness.

The Holy Spirit convinces the world about judgment. And that brings decision. Judgment consists in the fact that the Prince of this world is judged, not people. John 16: 8-11. Church discipline never fights against the individual concerned; it fights exclusively against the Prince of this human world, who is out to enslave souls, including those who belong to the church. 2 Timothy 2:24-26.

Most people are, however, truly enslaved. They are convinced that deeds done through their body by the Prince of this world are their own and that the judgments of these deeds are a personal attack on their identity. This is simply a matter of misconstrued identity. The judgment of these deeds that we experience in this life is toward the positive end for the soul to be purged of the evil identities that cling like parasitic spirits. Therefore, when a judgment comes our way as a result of evil deeds done by our own hand, we must resist the urge to defend ourselves, so that our souls can be purged of the identities we have assumed from him who is not our creator.

baby's day out

Occasionally in life—for me it seems a bit more than occasional—we encounter near misses. Those things we could have done that would certainly have landed us into a load of trouble. Sometimes there are those things we’re on the verge of doing but in a seeming moment of distraction, we were diverted from inevitable disaster. What disturbs me the most is when I look back and realize I have been saved from certain disaster in a moment of concerted decision, initiated by revelatory intuition, in the face of everyone jolly coming along and doing it too.

I was telling my brother about my numerous near misses--recently realized. I was freaked out and in a bit of a nervous tizzy as I told him the scenarios. His reaction was not like mine at all. He smiled and laughed and said, isn’t God amazing. He told me about how once a house church member of ours had marveled at the way I seemed to innocently leap into the middle of all sorts of crazy situations and walk out unscathed. I didn’t realize this was happening until he mentioned it. It’s something like the movie, “Baby’s Day Out.”

Our reaction to the suddenly realized danger we were in that God saved us from is entirely our choice. We could be any number of characters in that movie. We could be the baby snatchers, who know what evil intends. We could be the parents, freaking out over their baby, who God has obviously taken charge of that day.

My consejos for the day are these, be as innocent as that baby. Be as scheming as the baby snatcher. Be as concerned as the parents over the danger of another’s soul. And have a great day out and about, living up the adventure of life.