This End of the Telescope

Alone you ramble the whole of the world, through the black water jungles for bliss. It's feast or famine, you eat what you kill, there's no need to bring God in to this.

Inevitably when there is a need to understand something from a perspective that exists with us not being at the centre of the picture a conflict will occur. Inevitably.

We have to be the centre - and if we are not, the perspective must shift to make us so.

At our best, your joy becomes my joy, your pain becomes my sorrow. At worst, pain dictates my pleasure and your pleasure manipulates my pain.

This tension, albiet poorly described above, is a distorted, or muted image of that which I believe exists between our Creator and us.

Pain, conflict, sorrow and all that stuff which is, to us: "not good" is so quickly viewed through the wrong end of the telescope that we loose perspective. So our sorrow becomes about us, our pain is about us, and our confusion is about us not understanding. Through the wrong end of the telescope the Creator becomes a passive third party or at very best a smaller image that what he really is in this tension. It is from this end of the telescope that faith gets turned quickly into religion.

It's as if our understanding when it comes to God is that a) there is some stuff that God just "allows" to happen b) there is some stuff God wants to happen and c) there is some stuff where God just kind of goes..."oh shit..shoot didn't see that coming...hey Moses, you totally pulled the wrong lever on that one...this'll be interesting"

It becomes about us and only us - and then maybe a God character who is interacting from a far.I'm feeling like I'm only starting to wrap my head around this idea, that I think has many further implications - but in terms of the one I'm confronted with right now, the truth is this:

That if understanding our pain, pleasure and any other "thing" that goes on really gets reduced to the sum of our actions + the sum of other peoples actions and maybe the sum of a sometimes acting Diety we will forever come up short to the question of why does shit happen in our lives. Or more classically "why does God let bad things happen"

Always short.
And there are those (many, oh so many) Christians who actually believe (say on the topic of pain) that a lot of suffering is because God is just plain 'ol unhappy with them. They preach a sort of "God is getting you back" or actually disguise it as a "God is teaching you about ___" - while YES God does discipline those he loves, he is NOT "getting you back" and really I believe is not going "hmm how can I teach __ about humility...I know I'll give them nasty flesh eating disease...". Many christians would not actually articulate that, but I think a lot of us believe it. I'm going to go out on a limb here:
Jesus, when he died 2000 years ago, that was it. All the punishment, all the "revenge" that you could have had - done. Job's suffering wasn't about Job at all.

I think why we do this cause and effect system that reduces God is because we still want to be the centre of our faith and belief system. We have a great propencity for religion. This idea that whatever I do, it comes back. It puts us at the centre and removes Jesus. If I "get right" with God, he'll speak to me is such an intuitively "nice" idea but I would say totally biblically incorrect. Maybe it's unfair to draw a connection between us and Jakob - but, let's face it: where was he and what was he doing when God radically changed his (and our) life? Moses? the Disciples?

I do believe God's plan / will has suffering in it. Totally. But I think western Christianity has made up this cause and effect because it's easier than believing a faith that is mysterious, tension filled (ala first paragraph), not totally a sum of our actions etc. etc.

So ___ definitely, scour the bible for the why why why does this happen, but be prepared for the answer. I don't claim to know it, but I think it really has something to do with questions of who is this all about? Who is the person most glorified here? Cause, I think it's not really about us.

I think this Blog post is about a whole set of things just kind of perculating in a brain that I am finding to be ever more emotional, active and other than I would sometimes like. But I guess it's kind of an idea that our prayer life is so very much a reactionary thing - and while thats ok, it starts to breed a faith that it's about us. This starts to breed a set of beliefs that while based on the Bible, kind of take their own "twist."They are not "wrong" but I think a lot of the time they are really just not biblical (so yes they are wrong, I was just being kind). As a result of this "wrong" theology, when the proverbial shit hits the fan, we go running to a bible, from the totally wrong angle, and surprise, find that it just kind of leaves us unsatisfied.
But from a different end of the telescope I think, the galaxy is a lot bigger.

---
Word's out the doctor is not coming in
This genie's too angry to go back
Into the bottle again

Years of progress digging the sand
Companions we made didn't last
Lousy lovers do well with their hands
But I'll reach you like nobody can
Slow and easy you let your paddle go
Down a the bottom there is more hell to row
I see clear at last I love I loathe
On this end of the telescope

-Jakob Dylan

Snapshots of a Friday

'The guards are asleep", "the guards are asleep"

Kits beach, friday evening, eight o'clock. With a finished glass of spiced rum, a book and a bible in hand I find myself sitting against a log looking out over the ocean to a setting sun. A few logs over there is a group of about 20, 20 somethings, talking, making light conversation. Immediately I say to myself "must be a young adults group" - pretty soon a guitar gets pulled out, and before I know it they're signing starfield. Gosh.

Rewind by about 5 or 6 hours, driving up oak street. No music, no cell phone, no texting, no emails. Excited because I am close to finishing work and it's only 2pm. All of a sudden I blank out, and bam smash into the car in front of me. Shit.

The day is done.

Young adult singing wraps up, and a girl stands up to deliver, her expose on "salt and light." Knowing that the verse "should" mean something about something, she pulls meaning from it - the usual "stand up for Jesus" dialogue that was oh too familiar. Ironically, this process is almost more like squeezing salt from the rock, leaving a tasteless stone of a religion - void of this notion that SPIRITuality is more than "sticking up for Jesus." Let me tell you, he doesn't need sticking up for - history has done a good of enough job of that.

Have we become reduced to framing the gospels into an experience that we can "understand" and apply in a 30 minute study? Is that a bad thing?

Sitting in a room staring at a twenty something, dozing off in front of me. A few others to the right give me blank looks. Repeating words that both hold so much meaning and so much frustration - let the oil pour. Feeling, in some sense: ruined. Ruined because maybe I long for something that is not meant to happen. Ruined because maybe I think I could be a part of that - a catalyst. Ruined because, I think Jesus said it first, "We are prisoners of hope."

Salt and Light, Salt and Light. Saltiness, is not about "sticking up" for Christ. It's not about "walking the good walk" or even living by the moral handbook. Salt, and Light is spirit. Loosing one's flavour is not about denying Christ, but rather about denying spirit. Tasteless salt has all the qualities of Christianity, it has all the qualities of religion and following Christ. It just lacks its soul. You search the scriptures because you think in them there is life. You sit on a couch, making trite commentary about this person's thought on so and so, the historical analysis of Jerusalem, the pity prayer for those who don't know Christ - because you think in that you will have life.

My sheep know my voice.

He stood in the field, all of a sudden looked up quickly to the left and said - "sound the trumpet"; but the guards were asleep. The guards were asleep.

Aware.

Where have you been, my son? Where have you tarried so long? Where have you traveled? what have you been seeking in the world? Happiness? And where should you have sought it but in God? And where should you have sought God but in his temple? And what is the temple of the living God but the living temple that he has prepared for himself, your own heart? I have watched, my son, while you wandered, but I did not want to see you stray any longer. I have led you to myself by leading you into yourself, for here I have chosen a palace for my dwelling"
-John Amos Comenius

It's far too late right now to add to this, and really, how can I? How can I express what is deeper than to know that the living God has prepared a living temple for himself in you? How can we express anger towards christian circles who teach to fear thyself, to fear emotion to downplay imagination, creativity, expression? How can we cry for a renewal of thought, a reformation of an understanding of 'self' that is simply not valued in our culture? How do we build a damn against the flood of indifference, the currents of escapism the rushing of sound that violates our collective ear? How do we retort against the rhetoric of the "emergent few", ooh to be an emergent. From what are we emerging? and to what are we emerging into?

I have led you to myself by leading you into yourself, for here I have chosen a place for my dwelling. God help me.

Life After S.bucks - v.1

I remember it pretty well I guess - as well as one can remember complete chaos. I remember it because I was wearing my lululemon yoga pants and they had this weird streak on the left shin and although I had tried washing the pants like 3 times, the streak wouldn't come out. If I scratched my thumb nail against it, I would have success, but I couldn't be bothered to do that all day.

I knew something was ary when the dark rimmed, shaved about three days ago, popped collared barista told me they had run out of soy. S.bucks out of soy? I guess, with Soy being the most advanced of the beans, if any were to jump ship - it would. And yet the whole beauty of modern management for a chain like S.bucks is that it has removed from it all possibility of human error. We laughed at Office Space's depiction of "pieces of flare", silently sinking into the realization that a lot of us, are a lot closer to the reality of channeled expression than we'd like. Customize your drink, so long as it fits in the customize your drink boxes we've made.

But I digress. S.Bucks, running out of soy is like McDonalds running out of McNuggets; it just shouldn't happen. The variables that make up management have been reduced controlled or eliminated - all so I can have my Soy based beverage every damn day.

But it did. I changed my drink order and was waiting by the lid counter, reading a pamphlet on the duetto card, humming whatever was on the S.Bucks XM Radio and before I turned around to pick up my boring, soyless drink I knew it was over.

tremor

Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.

It’s coming you know, the big royal screw up. That thing that will shatter relationships, break your faith in others, break their faith in you. There will be an event, perhaps many, which will cause you to be shunned from your community; it will break you, and build for others paradigms for others to classify you for the rest of your life. The rock tumbler of life practically dictates it.

Some dodge it better; while others pretend it doesn’t exist. To them, the world is cause and effect; a chain reaction tipped off by from a sequence of events we build because of suspect character. It’s not fate, it’s not inevitable, but it is much more than an occurrence confined to the select few of lesser moral character. And this belief is a tragedy.

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, oh Lord please don’t let me be misunderstood…

Character is like concrete. For every day living, for walking on, making roads and sidewalks work, it is sufficient. But put it next to something ‘natural’ like a river or a tree and pretty soon it’ll be sunk in, cracked and in need of repair. They built the worlds largest bridge out of it, and failed to acknowledge the major fault line below. Three years later, and the “character” of the concrete is being questioned. Concrete, like character will fail us.

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.” - God

I have lived barely a quarter of my life (I think otherwise…) but it seems like every human being I see in the course of a day has a problem, some thing some wound that is sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. And the more perverse side is how much energy some spend rationalizing their own problems to convince themselves that the rest of the world is more amoral than we are.

If I die, and my soul be lost, nobodies fault but mine…

If I had to paint the colour of those who are the most ‘able’ advocates of the amorality of others, and the prolific proponents of their righteousness – it would be, sad to say: white. If I had to give them it a gender, it would be male; a religion: Christianity; a generation: X.

Human kindness is overflowing, and I think, I hope it’s going to rain today.

Perhaps the glaring contrast between my experience last week and this one is what forms this picture. Spending a week with a group of native people, ranging in age from 27 to 47, sounded like a track off a Nina Simone album. The song has soul, not so much in that the voice is powerful – but rather it is broken, pathetically optimistic and shatteringly real. A 26 year old, with a wife and three kids, lifts up his shirt to show me where his cousin cut him from the navel to the nipple for some feud, a 47 year old who doesn’t need to tell me their life story but in a laugh can say that she has seen much, experienced much and yet has still something to offer.

Oh sinner man, where you gonna run to?

The group that I am most familiar with till now, tends to sound more like a Gaither brothers rendition of “Mansion over the hilltop”, just keep smiling and singing and maybe they wont notice…Character commentary has become the strongest armor and the heaviest sword at the same time – we haven’t noticed that the slow dance is going on, while the room is burning – and we’re wondering why it’s so damn hot. Because many fear that if we lower our guard, if we extend the sympathetic, but genuine “I understand” for even one second, the whole world will disintegrate into chaos. We’re taught that to admit reality, to live outside a lifeboat theology (just keep paddling..), to fear, is not to fully trust God. Whoever started this, must have had a whole lota things going on.

How often is it we are rescued by a stranger, if ever at all? And how is it that our lives can become drained of the possibility of forgiveness and kindness – so drained that even one small act of mercy becomes a potent lifelong memory? How do our lives reach these points?

Here comes the sun little darlin, it’ll be alright..

I stood in the credit union watching a grown man in a wrinkled, dirty dress shirt, hold a syrofoam coffee cup, eyes baggy from days without sleep and retinas red from more than a few tears, and listened to him explain how the long march of Perdoe, leading to his expulsion will go I could think of nothing but of where his resting place will be.

Q: What animal would you be if you could be an animal?
A: You already are an animal

So why do I write this? Four or five disjointed paragraphs on the faults and faith of others. In part because I feel the tremor already of a (one of many) big screw-up. I can’t tell where it’s going to come, but I feel it. Is that totally self-deprecating of me? Perhaps. But I want to articulate now for myself that it will come. I want to recognize that no matter how big the bastard, we all came kicking and screaming from somebody’s womb, and we all will end up on lifesupport in some underfunded hospital, being looked after by a (dis)orderly. I think more than that I want to convey that pathetic hope that I saw last week in my newfound native friends to the crucified man I conversed with today.

I’m drunk right now baby, but I’ve got to say – I never could tell you what you mean to me.
What’s love, but a second hand emotion?

For whatever reason, I have a deep respect for singers who are able to convey their pathetic hope through song. They say that to suffer is universal. Yet to identify with suffering, to provide hope in suffering, or just simply to acknowledge suffering as being legitimate is all to rare, especially in my context. Moreover, to recognize suffering that is brought on from your own royal screw ups, and to be offered a hand of grace to be pulled out seems to be a wisdom that is, in my surrounding, sadly not universal.

All of our questioning, every broken dream, all of the anguish that the soul has ever seen, finally finds a resting place in you…

Maybe the natives I met are pathetically realistic. I think if ever there was a group to understand what screwed over, shunned and drop kicked out of life looks like – they would. We will all break and be broken in ways that can never be fixed; and if no one has ever told you – consider yourself told.

You know sometimes baby I’m so carefree; with a joy that’s hard to hide. And then sometimes it seems that all I have is worry – and then you’re bound to see the otherside.

letters from the trench

As for the ___ situation. I (obviously?) haven't been in touch with ____ about it - as when we (you and I) ended our discussion I mentioned that I wasn't sure how to see if it affected them in any impactful way.

My only thought is this: that Christianity/ Christians need to be a people willing to engage in dialogue without pre-condemming the situation before it happens. In the world, Christians become so quick to offer their advice, suggest a "solution" or give their well intended two bits, in an off putting manner. It suggest a superiority, and ironically an ignorance - that the solution has been thought through and there is no room for change, dialogue and ultimately growth.

So often swing to either extreme- condemn them in our minds and don't confront them, or confront them in a condemning manner. Either way, we loose. Sorry if this is a tangent, but I think it applies to the current situation. The accused (just like all of us), for all of the good that is in him, has many areas to improve on; but I don't know if he is given the opportunity to see them and/or to improve on them. My suspicion is that more often than not "we" pre-condemn him, or just think the best thing is to not give him an avenue for change.

So, my thought is really only that we have to offer the accused an opportunity for change. Change could come in the form of 'live and let live' although I doubt it. Change probably would come from being able to ask the accused what the intent was behind those words, describe what the result was (incase it is different from the intent), suggest that the situation be reconciled between the accused and the accuser (ie. suggest that accused offer what he wants to the accuser), and then leave it as is. You are not pre-condemning the accused by assuming ill intent, and you are not pretending like you know the steps the accused needs to take to 'make it right.' Further, I think you are not making the issue bigger than it is.
By doing this, you are loving the accuser (in that you are protecting/preserving), and I think loving the accused in that you are giving him an opportunity for growth.

This said, I really hold no judgement on what way you choose to go with. My colleague reminds me to choose the hills on which I want to die - and while I think that lead to a selfish approach to management, it certainly is a strategy that I use often, and know it sometimes to be the wisest approach. For example, the reaction to my email last week. You may have way bigger fish to fry and Satan loves to get us mixed up in skirmishes on the periphery

Anyways, sorry, those are my somewhat scattered thoughts.

and hollywood burnt

THEIR NAMES


Their names linger on the tongue:
Fallujah, Ramallah, Samarra, Ryad --
Like water, whispers, illicit love.

But in the rubbled streets
Fear, hunger and flames
Embrace flesh, whole families

Burning homes to ground
Memories to ashes
All that was precious to the dead

But is of no value on this earth
To the living who ignite the fires
The ones who erase their names.