JUSTICE

This coming Sunday, September 15, will be the 50th anniversary of the tragic 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham, Alabama. Four young girls (Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley, 14 all lost their lives in this bombing and it took years for those responsible to be brought to justice. Robert Chambliss, whose nickname was “Dynamite Bob”, was arrested and convicted in 1977 but the case sat dormant for another 20 years until the others responsible for carrying out this heinous act were finally arrested, tried and convicted. 

All of this started me thinking about justice. 

Miriam-Webster defines justice as - “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments” 

The Bible has a lot to say about justice, there is verse after verse. Leviticus 19:15 -Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. Deuteronomy 16:20 - Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the LORD your God is giving you. My favorite verse, Micah 6:8 states: He has told you, O mortal, what is good;and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness,and to walk humbly with your God. 

What I wonder is if justice was truly served in this case? 

It seems to me that it was definitely not swift as we are often told justice can and should be. Those girls, whose lives were cut so short, surely would not think that justice was served and I would guess neither would their families. These men went on to have many more years of life and in fact one other suspect, Hermann Cash died in 1994 without ever being charged. I struggle with the idea of justice and judgment. 

I know that God is the only real judge but there are times when I want justice now.  And in my world, I am both judge and jury. I often must remind myself that God sees the bigger picture or this life and that my sense of what is right and wrong and who deserves what punishment is skewed by my own limited and biased view of the world.  Although I believe in the final redemption of all souls, there is a part of me that so wishes for eternal damnation for those I view as unredeemable. 

Thankfully, God is the final and eternal judge and in the end I trust, that in Him, justice truly is served. 

Knowing and not knowing

As I approached the city of Seattle this morning on my commute in, my work building and some of the other taller buildings’ tops were hidden by the marine layer. I could only see about ¾ of my work building and yet I had certainty that the rest of the building was there. This made me think of faith and how I believe in a God that I have never seen but I have the certainty in my heart that He not only exists but that He loves me.


Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 as “…the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”.


After pondering the mystery of the marine mist for a moment more I returned to my book. The next part that I read gave me chills as it perfectly coincided with what I had just been thinking. The chapter is titled knowing and not knowing. The passage that just really hit me was: “Great spirituality is always seeking a balance between opposites, a very subtle but creative balance. As William Johnston once said, ‘Faith is the breakthrough into that deep realm of the soul which accepts parable with humility.’ When you go to one side or the other too much, you find yourself either overly righteous or overly skeptical and cynical. There must be a healthy middle…as we try to hold both the needed light and the necessary darkness”.


It hit me that, more times than not, I get caught up in finding the answers to the BIG questions and thus end up being overly righteous. It is a constant battle for me to just say that I don’t know. To understand and acknowledge that God’s mind is beyond mine and that I am not sure of the WHY. I so count on reason and intelligence to get me through when really the only thing that will truly rescue me is faith.

John Donne said that “Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right. We need them both. 


It is easy for me to admit that I do not have all the answers. What is continually hard for me to accept is that I may never find those answer or that they are beyond my understanding. Thinking is my hobby, the thing I love most to do, and to accept that I cannot think my way through to some resolution, some standpoint, to some substantial answer, that is humbling and often disconcerting. Yet humility is what Jesus was all about. Most times He did not give answers but responded to a question with a parable or another question. He wanted people to wrestle with things and to have faith. Matthew tells us that Jesus said that if we could just have faith in the amount of a mustard seed we could move mountains, that nothing was impossible.


So my Monday finds me at peace in my office. I have already been up to the 40th floor, above the mist, and guess what, that part of the building that I could not see from the street, exists.

Falling in Love with Jesus

I have been thinking about the differences in who I am as a Christian now juxtaposed to who I was in high school and college.  I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was a junior in high school at the Baptist Church I was attending.  I remember the altar call and the song that was playing - “Just as I Am.”  I went forward, knelt and Pastor Gosnell prayed with me.  It was real and I felt it but my relationship with Jesus was a mixture of adoration and fear.  Knowing I was gay and wanting to change that was part of the motivation for my salvation.  I thought if I could just accept Jesus into my heart I would be saved from both eternal damnation and what I thought at the time was a perversion.  I served God out of fear and not so much out of love. 

I accepted Jesus as my Savior again in the spring of 2009 and this time I did it completely out of love.  I fell in love and am continually re-falling in love with Jesus.  The closer I get to God the more I feel the desire to fall down on my face in adoration and praise.  It is not about religion for me - it is not about being a sinner in need of saving.  It is about relationship with a God who loved me so much that He stepped down from His throne to take human form, be tortured and nailed to a cross.  Jesus died for me. 

So I am a very different Christian then I was in my youth.  It is not just about the truth of Jesus for me anymore but the real relationship I have with Him.  It is the day to day of serving and loving a God who never leaves my side. 

 Oh how great is our God.  

Here are the lyrics to a great song that I love.

Give me rules
I will break them
Give me lines
I will cross them
I need more than a truth to believe
I need a truth that lives, moves, and breathes
To sweep me off my feet 
It ought to be

(CHORUS)
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love

Give me words
I'll misuse them
Obligations
I'll misplace them 
'Cause all religion ever made of me
Was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free
It's gotta be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love

It's like I'm falling in love, love, love
Deeper and deeper
It was love that made
Me a believer
In more than a name, a faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me
It's gotta be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love
It's gotta be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love
It's like I'm falling, oh
I'm falling in falling
It's like I'm falling

Apathy or Action

I have been thinking a lot lately about my responsibilites as a follower of Jesus.  Is my life one that reflects Christ?  Do my actions match what I profess to belief?  Jesus is pretty clear on what is expected of us.  We know that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, take care of the marginalized, feed the hungry, give to the poor and etc. 

In 1 John 3:17 we are told:  "How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?"  Pretty clear.  This is not just a New Testament command either.  In Proverbs 14:31 it states:  "Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him."

If I am honest with myself I am just not living up to what Jesus expects from me.  Sure I tithe to my church and other charities but the words of this great Matthew West song keeps popping into my head.  Here are the lyrics. 

"My Own Little World"

In my own little world it hardly ever rains
I've never gone hungry, always felt safe
I got some money in my pocket, shoes on my feet
In my own little world: population -- me
I try to stay awake during Sunday morning church
I throw a twenty in the plate but I never give 'til it hurts
And I turn off the news when I don't like what I see
It's easy to do when its population -- me
What if there's a bigger picture?
What if I'm missing out?
What if there's a greater purpose?
I could be living right now
Outside my own little world
Stopped till the red light, looked out my window
I saw a cardboard sign said, "Help this homeless widow"
And just above that sign was the face of a human
I thought to myself, "God, what have I been doing?"
So I rolled down the window and I looked her in the eye
Oh, how many times have I just passed her by?
I gave her some money then I drove on through
And my own little world reached population two
Father, break my heart for what breaks Yours
Give me open hands and open doors
Put Your light in my eyes and let me see
That my own little world is not about me
I don't wanna miss what matters
I wanna be reaching out
Show me the greater purpose
So I can start living right now
Outside my own little world, my own little world, my own little world

That is truly what my prayer has been lately - Father, break my heart for what breaks yours.  I sent this line or some version of it to a friend recently and she said that it really hit her hard.  It should hit all of us hard.  I know it does me. 

Then and Now

I have been having trouble sleeping at night for a while now.  Instead of just laying there tossing and turning, I usually get up and read.  

Last night when I was looking on our bookshelf in the bedroom for something to read the other night I came across some of my journals.  I used to keep a daily journal of the events of my life and I love reading back through them on occasion.  I randomly grabbed two of them and started reading.  

The first one was written in the year that I was so sick with Hodgkin’s and believed that death was imminent.  There is a lot of poetry in that one, a lot of talk of wanting it to be over with, of wishing I had the courage to walk out into the woods and shoot myself so that my friends and family would not have to watch me die.  Pretty self-absorbed melodramatic fare.  

The other one was from 1988 to 1989.  I was in my junior and senior year of college and coming to grips with the fact that I was gay, even though I had spent the last few years in and out of reparative therapy, counseling and having been in the prayers of everyone I knew, I was still gay.  I wrote about the death of my mother in August of 1988 and how much guilt I felt by feeling somewhat relieved that I would not have to deal with her mental illness and the effect that it had on me anymore.  I wrote about walking away from God in September of 1989.  I not only stopped believing in Him, I actively cursed and hated Him.  There is a lot of anger in the writings of 1989. 

Yet here I am 24 years later alive and once again a person of deep faith.  All of this I owe to God.  The thing is, although I gave up on Him, walked away, actively cursed His name, He was still there walking beside me, loving me and caring for me.  That is how great God’s love for us is.  I am living in a state of gratitude now for that abiding, constant love.  God loved me back to faith and to life.  How lucky am I!

The past couple of months have seen a time of a deepening of my soul.  I find myself walking further away from self-absorption towards living in the self- less image of Jesus.  Not that it has been easy.  I have spent to much of my life being self-absorbed and egocentric for it to be a smooth transition.  Yet I see God’s work of transformation in me. 

The less I am - the more He is. 

Love abounds.  I feel more love in my life now than I ever have.  I am hopelessly devoted to my family and the close friends I have.  My walk with God is deeper than I can even fully understand and I am experiencing a newness of spirit.  The more I am able to put God and others before me the happier I am.  The less I think about myself the more at peace I feel.  I find that I am smiling a lot these days. 

There is a great song that I find myself singing in my head almost constantly and I want to finish this post by sharing the lyrics of just the chorus with you:

Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God

God's Timing

God’s timing often surprises me but His message is always just what I need to hear at the time I most need to hear it.

Lately I have been struggling with my relationship with my wife’s best friend. Her friendship with Meghen has been strained the last couple of years and when Meghen finally asked her why, she replied that it was due to me and how, since I have returned to faith, I have changed and she does not like being around me. At first I was defensive, stating that I had not changed. But how could that be true as God’s love is so transformative, I had changed. So I accepted that I had changed but I could not figure out how those obviously good changes could make her not like me. I am used to people not liking me or not wanting to hang out with me but it is generally because I am too intense, too self-absorbed, etc. I have even had people not like me because I am gay.  But I am not sure I have ever had someone not like me based on my following Jesus. 

Over the last few months I have accepted her not liking me. I still had love in my heart for her and I was basically indifferent to the whole situation. But knowing how it is affecting my wife is starting to get to me. Meghen misses their friendship and she is entirely blameless in its demise. Seeing her sense of loss and sadness is starting to make me hate this person. That coupled with the fact that she will not even put her disdain for me aside to come to my wife’s 40th birthday party. I feel my heart hardening towards her and this seed of hate growing. I have felt completely justified in what I feel is a rationale reason to hate this person.

This is where God’s perfect timing comes in.

I have been reading a book about the Apostle Paul but put it aside to start this book on God’s Love - If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace In An Ungracious World. Not sure why, I was enjoying the Paul book but for some reason I decided to throw the other one in my backpack to read on my commute. I am only about half way through the book and it is challenging me. Not that it is presenting a premise that I don’t wholeheartedly agree with but is challenging me to LOVE and to do in my own life the same things I am always encouraging others to do in theirs. 

In the chapter titled - Being Gracious it states: “Most people talk more radically than they live. The challenge is to live more radically than your talk.” I accept and believe in God’s universal grace and I believe and accept that Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves. I know that Jesus was all about loving the unlovable, the marginalized, those that society had discarded. 

In the gospel of Luke we read the story of the lawyer who tests Jesus by asking; “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all of your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live” 

(Luke 10:25-28)

This was a simple message but a daunting challenge. Is not the person that I am starting to have feelings of hatred towards my neighbor? I am humbled by the fact that I am struggling with the most basic and yet most important instruction that Jesus gave us. I think loving the Lord your God AND loving your neighbor as yourself are tied together in a way that if you don’t do the latter you are certainly not really doing the first. I think we have to be able to love our fellow man in order to love God with ALL of our heart.

My prayer is that God will soften my heart and continue His work in me to help me to love as He so loves us. And that I might live more radically and truly walk the talk.

Richard

I see Richard twice a week on the days when I take the 5:45 ferry.  We both work for the City of Seattle so we end up riding the ferry and the bus together.  In the past, before the accident, we talked of our lives, our children, and what books we had recently read or were currently reading.  We bonded over these common interests and became friends. 

After the accident I did not see him for a couple of months but thought about him daily, prayed for him every chance I could and often wept for him.  The first day I saw him returning to work it was apparent that he did not want to talk.  His demeanor and the way he hung back away from people made it very clear that he did not want to interact with anyone.  When we got on the bus together I sat, just for a moment, in the seat next to him.  I touched him, verbally acknowledged his obvious need for privacy and told him that I was so very sorry for his loss.  Since that time he and I have talked occasionally.  

We no longer talk about our children.  The raw emotion of the tragedy, that resulted in the loss of his son, are just too painful for him to share. But he does not have to talk about this loss to me for me to feel the depths of his grief.  It is visible in his face and in the way he carries himself.  When I am with him I see that sorrow and I feel woefully inadequate to offer any comfort.  I can in no way imagine what he is going through and find it heroic that he is able to even get out of bed. 

From our conversations, I know that Richard does not hold to any faith tradition. This makes my heart ache and I so wish I could find a way to share Jesus with him in a way that would not come across as proselytizing.  I am sure he has heard his fill of:  “Ryan is in a better place” or any other statements talking of heaven or the afterlife.  The idea of heaven brings little comfort to those that truly believe it so how much comfort can it bring to someone who does not hold any faith in a life after death.

I know that in my life when tragedy has struck, I cling to God and seek Him for comfort.  The belief that God is always with me helps me with the feelings of isolation and the sense of loneliness that comes with deep grief.  Yet even with this sense of God’s presence, while in the depths of grief and the senselessness of tragedy, I often feel doubt. 

The age old question of why God allows such events to occur haunts me.   

This question goes back thousands of years. It was asked by Job and the writers of the Psalms.  It is a theme in both the Old and New Testaments and in the New Testament, Jesus flat out tells His disciples that there would be suffering in this world.  

When asked this question my short answer is that I don’t know.  I cannot see through God’s eyes or know His purpose.  Our finite perspective does not allow us to understand everything in the way that God’s infinite wisdom allows.  I trust what the Apostle Paul tells me in Corinthians 13:12 -“All I know now is partial and incomplete but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”  

What I understand and call upon when tragedy strikes is that, although I firmly believe that God is in control, He did create us to have free will.  When God created us He wanted us to experience love but to give us the ability to love He had to give us the free will to choose whether or not to love.  Love always involves a choice.  If we were just programmed to say “I love you” it would be hollow and would not really be love.  Sadly, humans have abused these choices and have chosen to walk away from God and make choices that are not right.  This allows evil to exist.

There are two kinds of evil, moral and natural.  

Moral evil is the pain, suffering and tragedy that come because we choose to make choices that are selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful and abusive.  When there is famine people look at the famine and wonder why God has allowed it to happen, but the world produces enough food for each person and it is our own irresponsibility and self-centeredness that prevents people from getting fed. 

The other kind of evil is natural evil.  Natural evil are things like earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, hurricanes, and tsunamis.  Things that occur in nature that cause suffering for people. There are those that believe that these types of tragedies occur because man turned away from God and sin entered the world and I while I agree somewhat with that, I also believe that this is just a part of the natural world and the process of evolution.

I believe that while God did not create evil, He did create the potential for that evil to enter the world because it was the only way to create the potential for genuine love and goodness.  Our free will and the choices that we make that are away from God is what brought that potential evil into reality.

We know that God is omnipotent and has the ability of foresight but He also knew the incredible potential for deep joy, love and meaning.  Just as parents know that when they choose to have children there is the very real potential for heartache, pain and disappointment.  There is the chance that their child may reject them and even walk away.  Yet we still have kids because there is also the great potential that they will bring us boundless joy and meaning.

I also believe that, although God may not cause the suffering and that tragedies and suffering are not good, God can use it to accomplish good. 

For Richard none of this brings any comfort, all he knows is the pain of losing his child.  And at this point all I can do is to let Christ shine through me so that I can be a steadfast presence of God's love for him.  

I don’t have the answers but I believe in a God who loves us and can bring us peace if we only follow Him.  In that same verse that Jesus tells us that there will be suffering, He also tells us that He will bring us peace and that He will overcome the suffering of the world.   

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) 

The following quote by Lee Strobel rings so true:  "God’s ultimate answer to suffering isn’t an explanation; it’s the incarnation. Suffering is a personal problem; it demands a personal response. And God isn’t some distant, detached, and disinterested deity; He entered into our world and personally experienced our pain. Jesus is there in the lowest places of our lives. Jesus was broken for us.  He was rejected, hated and despised; he was a man of sorrows and personally acquainted with deep grief.  He was loved and He was rejected and denied."

While they were suffering in a Nazi death camp at Ravensbruck, Betsie ten Boom told her sister Corrie the following as she was dying: “There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.” 

I pray that Richard in some way feels God’s love.  

I pray that we all do.

Spiders, Evolution and Mark Driscoll

I was joined in the shower this am by a daddy long-legs spider that quickly succumbed to the pull of the water and was headed down the drain.  Lucky for the little guy I saw it in time and gently picked it up and moved it to safety outside the shower stall. 

Saving the spider made me think of how important every life is on earth, the interconnectedness of all living things with each other and God, and a recent statement made by Mark Driscoll (Head pastor of Mars Hill Church) at the Catalyst Christian Conference. 

The following is what Driscoll said:  “I know who made the environment and he’s coming back and going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV.”  WOW!  Yet God instructs us in Psalms that we are to be stewards of the earth.  “We are stewards of God's earth, ruling over that which is not ours. You [God] made humans ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under our feet: All flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.”  In Genesis it states that: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it…" The Hebrew words shamar and abad, usually translated as "till and keep" in this verse, could be just as accurately translated as "serve and preserve." In his statement regarding God burning it all up, Driscoll, is referring to passages from Revelation that some believe are about a future time when Jesus will return for the saved and the earth will be consumed by fire.  Most modern theologians believe that when Revelation is read contextually (within the times/culture it was written) it is talking about events in John the Apostle’s lifetime and not the far off future.  Personally no matter what you believe about the book of Revelations, God makes it abundantly clear that He expects us to take care of his creation so Driscoll’s statement seems callous at best and at worst un-Christian as is not aligned with the Word of God.  I bet you Mark does not save wet spiders.

Ironically, this comes at the same time that I have been reading a very heady book titled The Emergent Christ.  It is a book about God and the process of Evolution.  Most of you know that my great passions are theology, literature, philosophy, art and biology.  Which is why I could not decide in college which to major in and have either a BA or minors in all of the above.  I specifically love Evolutionary biology but even with my education in biology, this book is really making me think and I find myself re-reading passages. The process of Evolution has always made perfect sense to me and I never had any issues still believing in a Creator.  This belief almost cost me my degree at Bethany Bible College as it did not align with the school’s staunch belief in either Intelligent Design or Creationism.  I had to attend “counseling” sessions with Professors of Theology and Biology who instructed me on the truth of Creationism and the falseness of Evolution.  I refused to withdraw my statement of belief in Evolution and only after I threatened to sue the college did they go ahead and let me graduate.  The President of the School did not shake my hand when he presented my my diploma. 

I wanted to share a couple of passages that have really struck me.  

“ the science of evolution helps open up new windows of insight to the God-world relationship whereby we see creation not as a static world but as a relationship between the dynamic being of God and a world in process of coming to be.”

“Evolution helps us realize that God works through the messiness of creation and is less concerned with imposing design on processes then providing nature with opportunities to participate in its own creation.” 

“In this world we humans do not occupy the center of the universe; neither are we superior to all other living beings.  Rather, the interconnectedness of life in our universe means that we are part of a web of life.”

“God is unbroken wholeness in movement, and creation is movement toward God-centered wholeness.” 

Read that last passage again - isn't it amazing.  

There are several great passages on quantum physics and God but I will spare you - this is heady stuff and I urge you to consider reading the book. 

I guess more than anything the more I learn of God, from God, and about God, I see this interconnectedness and it makes me view the world with that same wonder we all had as children.  It truly is an amazing and intricate web with an unbroken God at its center.

Vocation

My church has been having members of the parish occasionally preach on Sundays. They are asked to preach specifically on their vocation. Our rector always introduces these special sermons by quoting Fredrich Buechner (American writer & theologian) on what vocation is.

"Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need.”

This past Sunday, Mary Yu delivered the message on her vocation and how God uses her as a King County Superior Court judge. Great message by an equally great person of faith.

I have been thinking about my own "vocation". In refering to Buechner's definition above, I would say that my "vocation" is follower/disciple of Jesus. I experience deep gladness when I am talking, thinking, sharing, or learning about God.

I am currently reading a great book on evangelism by Brian McLaren. In my last blog I quoted from him. One of the things that has struck me while reading this book is how far I have come in my view of what being a disciple of Christ really is.

While I in high school and college I "evangelized" every chance that I had. I felt called to lead others to Christ. This evangelizing was more of bullying and scaring people into accepting Jesus as their savior in order to escape hell. I had those verses referring to salvation committed to memory. I spent very little time really listening to those I was so desperately trying to lead to the cross and salvation. I had the answers and they just needed to listen and accept. Every time I walked away having failed to have the person I was talking to not get down on their knees and accept Christ, I felt dejected, sad and guilty that I could not save them from eternal damnation. WOW!

Needless to say that is not how I feel now. To me being a disciple of Jesus means being a light in darkness. Listening and loving those, who just like me, are struggling to find their path. It means letting Jesus lead me and treating others as fellow children of God - not sinners who desperately need salvation. It means sharing how my relationship with God deepens me and gives my life meaning and purpose. It means serving as a reflection, in every thing I do, of God's unfathomable love. That is my vocation.

... since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:11

Lyrics & passage

I have been crazy busy this week at work and have not taken my usual breaks to write.  Plus I just have not had any concise clear thoughts worthy of blogging about.  I have however been listening to a lot of music and reading every chance I get.  So no commentary, just reprinting of the lyrics of a song by Jennifer Knapp titled Breath on Me.  I discovered Jennifer Knapp about a month ago when I was reading Rachel Held Evans blog on Christians who have come out.  She rocks.  

Breathe on Me
No temptation seize a man that he can't overcome
who am I to be fallen?
Crack your back on a slab of wood
Come freedom, nail it down
I come crawling,
I come crawling

Come trickle down and save the world
two hands that I can't see
come breathe, come breathe,
come breathe on me
split-rib water, blood and bone
come now, come Calvary
come breathe, come breathe on me

Testimony come now, quickly, whisper in my ear:
celebration
Peace at last not far away, empty sheet, a borrowed grave:
salvation
come freedom, come
come freedom, come

Come trickle down and save the world
two hands that I can't see
come breathe, come breathe,
come breathe on me
split-rib water, blood and bone
come now, come Calvary
come breathe, come breathe on me
come breathe, come breathe on me

come freedom, come
come freedom, come
come freedom, come

Come trickle down and save the world
two hands that I can't see
come breathe, come breathe,
come breathe on me
split-rib water, blood and bone
come now, come calvary
come breathe, come breathe on me


Pretty powerful stuff.  It is everything I can do to not raise my hands high in the air when I hear this song or get down on my knees.  Both of which might alarm my co-workers and make them question my sanity.  Lately I have just been so on fire for God and feeling His presence so deeply.  Hard to contain myself.

The passage that I want to share is from More Ready Than You Realize by Brian McLaren. 

"Good evangelists are people who engage others in good conversation about important and profound topics, such as faith, values, hope, meaning, purpose, goodness, beauty, truth, life after death, life before death and God...Evangelists are people with a mission from God and a passion to love and serve their neighbors."

Creation

I have been thinking lately about the process of creation. This was sparked by my recent clean out of a box under my desk at home. In it, I found a folder overflowing with old poetry that I had written back when I was an aspiring poet. Most of this is admittedly awful poetry. There are some that are okay and those are ones that were written and revised. The poems that eventually got published in small poetry chapbooks have underwent several sometimes extensive revisions. They took a lot of work as most things that have value do.

Great works of literature, poetry, music, and art are most times resultant of a lot of blood, sweat and tears. And I would venture to say revision and reworking. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass underwent several revisions during Whitman’s lifetime. Much of Henri Matisse’s amazing canvases started out as simple drawings. This was true of my favorite artists from the Der Blaue Reiter movement (Blue Rider), Kandinsky, Marc and Klee. They often made rough sketches that they revised when painting. Their creations did not just happen; they took work and were the result of a process of trial and error. They evolved, were reworked, and revised.


The universe and all its wonders are God’s great creation. The Bible tells us in Genesis; “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” I believe that this act of creation was done through the process of evolution. God set that process in motion and that process constantly revising. Always striving to get it perfect.

The Bible also tells that us that man is God’s greatest creation. A creation that He made in His own image. Genesis stated that God formed man of dust or clay from the ground. I always imagine the sculptures of Rodin when I read this passage. And yet even God's greatest creation, man undergoes revision and is ever evolving.

I know that I am a work of constant revision.  I am aware of aspects of me that I know need improvement. Don’t we all. I am different than I was 20 years ago both in physical appearance and in who Robin is. Heck I am a different me today than I was yesterday.  I work on my relationship to God and my world. God works on me, gently guiding me to be more Christ-like. 

Creation is a mighty and active thing. I am sure thankful that we have a God that continues to revise and does not just shove us in a folder, in a box, under His desk.

We are all God’s poems, the cosmos His canvas, the stars His concerto.

We are all His creation!

Holy Rolling in a Mainline Protestant Church

I have been having a really hard time lately with going to church on Sundays.  

I love aspects of my church, Carla (the rector), other members and the church sanctuary but I miss the praise music of the churches that I attended in my Pentecostal past.  The guitars and drums of a Calvary Chapel or even the modern praise music that the Presbyterian Church I attended screened with an overhead projector onto the wall.  

Don't get me wrong, I do love hymns but I miss “good old raise your hands in the air” praise music and that combined with the repetitive rituals, has made me feel stagnat and just going through the motions.  Carla's sermons are always thought provoking but it is hard to attend every Sunday just for that.    

Yet I managed to drag myself to church this past Sunday as I have done for several Sundays now, reluctantly.  There in my pew, near the back, God reached me.  Carla’s sermon this past Sunday was just what I needed without knowing I even needed it.  She stood in the aisle, not in the pulpit, and talked about the elements of the service.  She explained them in a way that I had never even considered.  I wish I could remember each and every thing she said.  She talked about the rites of the Episcopal Church in a way that made me understand that they were meant to be more than routine rituals that we perform.  They are meant to make us think, reflect, and strengthen our relationship with God.  They are not static but rituals of action.  They require something of us and if we treat them as merely mindless rituals then church can easily become rote and stagnant.  

Just hearing this and understanding that I needed to change the way I was looking at church, opened a door for me.  During a simple song where we repeat a chorus of “Alleluia” after each verse, I found myself raising my hands in praise.  At first I was a bit tentative, my hands were just a little but in the air but as I let myself feel the words both hands were soon raised high.  

It did not feel entirely comfortable.  I felt a little self-conscious.  It may take a little time before I am entirely able to just let go.  

However...

It felt good.  It felt active.  It felt right.   

Gideon

I am hard headed. If you know me at all you know a truer statement could not be made. I get so bogged down, so lost in my own head that I can’t hear God’s voice much less see the ways in which He is trying to lead me.

Since turning 50 a couple of months ago I have been feeling a bit directionless and lost. Asking for God’s direction in my life has become the focus of my prayers and this loss of direction has consumed my thoughts during the day as well as the night when it has caused me a great deal of insomnia. I found myself wondering why God was not answering me. Turns out He was providing the answers and the direction but as usual, He had to basically smack me upside the head to get me to listen and see.

What it took so long for me to see what that He has brought several people into my life in the last couple of weeks that I found myself ministering to or supporting in one way or another, sometimes with just listening, sometimes with prayer and often times with both. When I say several I mean more than just a few. For those who are not so quite hard headed it may have only taken one and for most, maybe a couple but for me it took 5 separate incidences.

5

I want to share with you the last incidence - my AHA moment. I went to a reading by a young gay Christian author on Monday night. The book is “Does Jesus Really Love Me” by Jeff Chu. It is a powerful and courageous thought provoking book and the reading was great but what really moved me was the question and answer period after. I had asked a question about emergent churches and had identified myself as having been a Pentecostal. Later a man who was sitting behind me also asked a question and stated that he was a member of a Pentecostal church. After the Q & A was over I introduced myself to this guy, Tony, and we began to talk. As he was telling me his story his eyes filled with tears and he revealed to me that he had been considering suicide. He just could not reconcile his beliefs and his homosexuality. I too, started to cry and shared with him that I too had at one time thought very seriously about suicide and actually had attempted it. I too, at that time could not reconcile how I believed with who I was and this seemed the only way out. This was a horrible, dark time in my life so I could feel and understand his pain.

The thing is, and what I will be hoping and praying for Tony to realize is, that we are all children of God. I am a child of God and you are a child of God and Tony is a child of God. Nothing can change that. God doesn’t even need us to believe in Him to make that true. It just is. It took me almost 20 years, a lot of people praying for me and a failed suicide attempt to get to this point - again the hard headedness plays a part BUT I am here and I am testifying that I know this to be true. God loves me and accepts me for who I am and He is willing to keep trying to get through to me no matter how dense I am.

Pray for me and pray for Tony. Ask God to guide me in my relationship with this man and that I can serve Him by supporting Tony and helping him to realize just how big and amazing God is and that there is a place for EVERYONE at the table.

Oh and if you don’t know the story of Gideon - google it or you can find it in the Bible in the 6th chapter of Judges.

Change

A while back Meghen’s best friend told her that the reason she had not made any real effort to sustain their friendship was because I had changed since my return to faith. 

I have spent a good deal of time thinking about this and feeling bad and also somewhat guilty that I cost Meghen this friendship.  I also denied any change and asked friends who knew me well before and after if there was any merit in her statement. 

This morning on my ferry ride in to work it hit me that, of course it is true.  Since “my conversion”, (for lack of better word), I have changed.  I am different.  I am made “new” in Christ.  When I look back on my journey out of faith and back into faith, I do see the changes and more importantly, I feel these changes.  

The years I spent trying to deny what I knew in my heart to be true were hard.  It was a constant battle trying to convince myself to not believe and to shut any doors that could possibly be open to any acceptance of Jesus.  I look back and I see God’s faithfulness to me, His steady hand in my life. I am grateful that God does not give up on us as we so often give up on Him.  I have a peace in my soul now and a joy that I cannot adequately explain.  

So I guess Meg’s friend is right, I have changed.  

Quality of Life

This week I had to make a pretty big decision and for the past couple of weeks this impending moment has been keeping me up at night. It had to do with a job that I applied for that would have meant an over 20% increase in salary. Major decision when you are the primary breadwinner in the family. The problem with this job was that it would have meant giving up my Fridays and commuting off island 5 days a week instead of 4. My Fridays are when I get to hang out with my kids and have lunch with them at school. It is when I do my volunteer work at the church and school. It is when I have some time alone to take a walk, pray, meditate, write and maybe meet a friend for coffee. Fridays are what I like to call my “soul refresher” days.

$14 K more a year is hard to pass up but I did. I told the HR rep to pull me and that I would not be doing the second interview that had been set up. Crazy - well maybe but when I reflect back over the choices that I have made in life and the choices that Meghen and I have made together, well we always seem to choose our quality of life and since we have had kids, the choices have all been with their best interests in mind.

For me choosing quality of life started early on. I always seemed to follow the things that I loved rather than what would bring me security or financial gain. I took the LSATs, was accepted at UC Hastings Law School but chose a liberal arts masters program in early American Literature instead.

15 years ago, I was in the middle of chemotherapy treatments for Hodgkin’s lymphoma that had re-occurred. I had only been in remission for 4 years so having it reoccur so quickly was a bad sign. I got to a point that my quality of life was suffering to such a degree that I made the decision to stop treatment and to take a trip across the United States. I spent almost 5 months on the road traveling the US, visiting national parks, art & natural history museums, and thinking. I spent time with friends that I had not seen in years and I rediscovered myself. I also came back cancer free. I do not know how but it was gone and it has remained so.

Over 9 years ago, Meghen and I decided that having a parent at home with our newborn daughter was important enough to us for her to quit her job and for us to figure out how to survive on my income.  I found a second job and we made it work. Then when I was laid off from one of my jobs, we made the decision to pick up and move to Vashon so that our kids could have a better childhood.

All of this is to say that I firmly believe that money is not everything. I can say that as we have our basic needs met and are able to scrape by. I know this is a privilege that some do not have. I feel lucky that I am in the position that I could freely make this choice and that I was not forced to choose out of necessity.

I know there are some that would say I am foolish for these choices, that I have just gotten lucky and they could be right. I may end up never being able to retire or living in the woods in a shack but I believe that we get one shot at this life and we should make the best of each day that we are given.

Man I did not want to go to church this morning but since Finn really wanted to and I really NEEDED to we got up and went.  It did not start off well.  I dropped Finn off at Sunday school and then went up for service.  Carla (pastor) and Paul (music director) were both on vacation which meant that Ann was preaching.

Ann is a wonderful person but not a very inspiring preacher and I often skip church when she is giving the sermon.  PLUS in the row in front of me was a mother and her young daughter who was standing on the pew and kept sliding up and back and talking loudly.  All of this was quite distracting and this was a morning where I really felt the need for peace.  I started asking myself why I was even there, how possibly could God's voice be heard in my heart when I felt so distracted and unfocused.  In fact, right after the service started I thought about skipping out,  then someone I knew came in late and sat beside me.

During the hymn she started sobbing so I put my arm around her.  She cried off and on throughout the service and when it was over I asked her if she wanted to talk.  We talked for a while and prayed together.  She is going through some major issues of the heart and there was much I could relate to but I always feel inadequate when I offer comfort to others.

Then it hit me...I don't have to be perfect and have just the right thing to say to those in pain because I am a vessel of God and He above all can offer the greatest comfort.  I just need to allow God to use me to be that light for the person who is surrounded by darkness.  It also became glaringly apparent that there were a myriad of reasons for me to have my butt in that pew that morning.

I am struggling and seeking answers for myself right now but taking the time to offer comfort and to listen to someone else who is struggling in some small way helped me.  It made me think of the verse in Isaiah (55:8) where God says:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD.

I know that God is there and even though I am struggling, I know He is there.  I know that the ways in how He is comforting me may not always be obvious or in the ways I think I need but He is there.  He works through those around us in ways that we could not even imagine and sometimes the greatest way He gives us comfort if by bringing us into situations where we are asked to comfort someone else.  God's grace in our lives is most often revealed in the small everyday things that we take for granted.  My prayer this day is that God opens my eyes so that I am open to the ways in which He wishes to reach me.

Milestone Reflection or Midlife Crisis?

I turned 50 a little over a month ago and at the time I must have been too busy to really ruminate on it until NOW.  The past week has found me contemplating my life and the fact that, statistically speaking, more of it is behind me than in front of me.  

There is a line in an Indigo Girls song that says:  "Every five years or so I look back on my life, And I have a good laugh".  The last 5 years for me has brought several changes - most of them major, including selling our house and picking up and moving to Vashon Island but the biggest one of all was the fact that I returned to a faith in God/Christ that I had attempted to abandon almost two decades earlier.  

Music and reading are two of my favorite pastimes and I find that God speaks to me through lyrics and the written word.  My return to faith was brought on by attending a performance of the Indigo Girls and the lyrics of the Amy Ray song - Let It Ring.  "I'm gonna let it ring to Jesus cause I know He loves me too and I get down on my knees and I pray the same as you".  In that instant a peace washed over me and I had an Apostle Paul conversion so to speak.  I realized that God had been there all along and as much as I tried to convince myself of His un-existence, I just couldn't.  I am reading a great book right now penned by a Christian journalist who happens to be Gay titled: Does Jesus Really Love Me? and the following line struck me.  "I doubt. A lot" And yet I can't not believe in God". 

So all of this leads up to the point of this entry which is to say that I am feeling a bit unsettled with this big milestone birthday but not quite sure why I am feeling this way.  My prayers this week have been a lot of just listening- trying to feel God's presence and to figure out what I am missing that is making me feel so lost.  One realization I had is that, even though I have a wonderful church, I am needing a friend (on island) that I can hang out with and talk about issues regarding faith and my walk with Christ.  I have good friends off island that I can share with but finding a person of faith close to my own age on island is challenging and may be impossible.  I have reached out to someone who attends my church and with whom I have a lot in common but church attendance on Vashon does not always equate with belief.  However I remain optomistic and believe that God's hand is in all of this and that if I am faithful and follow He will surely lead.   

So in this time of what appears to be some sort of mid-life crisis for me, I ask for your prayers of peace and understanding.  And don't worry I am not going out and buying a convertible but I have been thinking about a motorcycle.