seeking peace in desert places

 
I went to the desert for peace. I found that the noise was in my head. I went to the desert to pray and then I didn’t know what to say to God. I went to the desert to be alone but somehow everyone came with me. I went to the desert to rest but carried a heavier load than ever before in my life.
Deserts are the living metaphor for life. The journey is long and tedious. The nights are cold. The days are hot. The briars and thorns argue with your intent. The barren landscape mirrors the wretched parts of the empty soul, the thirsty church, the wretched state of humankind.
If you go to the desert, go to encounter wonder and terror.

So the photo is my evidence that it happened. That is my shadow against the setting sun. I pitched my tent beside a range of rock hills to the east of the basin I crossed. The sun fell behind the mountains by 5 and everything was pitch black by 6. Sweat stung the scratches and gashes I received in an encounter with a thorn bush. I washed them clean and left the thorns for removal by the morning sun. I tried to read. But I was afraid. I tried to sleep to forget the fear but the fear prevailed. I tossed and turned. The quiet nothingness contrasted with the noise and worries I brought with in my head, till the helicopters started droning away in the distance and the cold chilled me to the bone. The stars hung into my face. Cassiopeia and Andromeda beckoned me to wonder but I was too cold to be good company. The coyote’s song brought the dawn to comfort and soothe. I frantically climbed the hill of rocks that shadowed my abode from the rising sun. I sat down to contemplate the lessons given by ants. Peace and fullness flooded me to the pit of my soul as I soaked in the morning sun.

deserts and scholars

 


So I'm off to some desert wandering and scholar stalking.
I'll be back in a week.

interpreting mystery

The past series of image related posts have plumbed deeply from the depths of the mystery of God’s intimate and personal presence as well as his intensely beautiful connective character in the posited, ever being renewed creation. His word is pervasive in reality just as the word of an image sketched. Personal, communal and divine are but x to the third in a math of infinite dimensions. The power of the mystery entices and entrances.

Yet this may all be too mysterious to appreciate. My sister got a bit of a commentary and told me she would have missed most of it without the commentary. I struggle to express the mystery clearly enough to entice but allowing it its own character. In the hopes to not destroy the mystery, I make a tentative attempt toward description.

The parable of the adult in an infant seat is a personal message. It is an individual. It is also the church. It is also the Christ. All have wounds. All have scars. All have been self-inflicted. All have been rejected and unesteemed. All have put on the vestiges of infants. All are called by the same name. All exist in the tension between already-not yet.

Revelation. What is the meaning of Revelation. The images from John on Patmos, who can find the end of it? One attempts a historical contextual interpretation. One a futurist prophesy. Others stand in line. Who is right? Who has the epistemological sense of the times? Who can plumb the depths of this mystery? Perhaps there is no mystery and we must strip it down to its bare boned science. We could survey our congregations like "It matters not how it is revealed." This is perhaps security of control. Or perhaps we should bask in the rays of its eternal sustainance. We could be drawn to the banquet. Commune with the cook. Perhaps this is security of another sort.

Your life changed ours. Your death calls us to life, eternal.

In memory of the death of my beloved sister,

The story of Joanna who died at age 22 was the tragedy of our lives. She was young. She was beautiful. She was dynamic and relational. And if that wasn’t enough, she was also feisty and passionate about living out the Spirit of Christ’s compassion into our lives. She was beginning her senior year at Crown College. After attending a week of spiritual enrichment meetings, she was riding with a friend, when they were in a traffic accident that took her life.

Your life to mine was full and vibrant.
Your death was like a dooms day whisper.
I longed to embrace the dreams of life with you.
But another voice spoke more insistently

You forgave one who had wronged you. You tasted the freedom of it before you died. You partook in the divine calling on earth, before your soul joined with the one who sacrificed and gave for you. Sacrifice. Forgiveness. It is etched in our memories like your last words to us. We forgave too. We continue to forgive today. Forgiveness, love and courage to live boldly in the beauty born of ashes. Lord, grant us this grace. This is the hope we live for. This is the love we are transformed by.

When we buried you body
Our tears were for our lost dreams of life with you
When we visit your grave today
Our tears remember the life we once lived with you

God called us to greater things through your life and your death. Even though we wish you could have stayed and called us to the redemptive life, your absence has done so also. Tragedy calls out the worst or the best in us. In the end, we, your family, hope to live out the best.