No Enemies

I saw a bumpersticker today that said: Love your enemies and you won't have any.

This is true, but only from a certain angle. YOU won't have any.

But, understanding this through the life of Jesus, we must be willing to love our enemies, and thus have no enemies, even if they consider and treat us like we are their enemies.

Image of the Trinity

"Wherever you go, there you are."
Nope.
If you are running to "find yourself"
you will always carry with you
and so find "there"
a shell of who you are.

But you will also find there other people
offering yourself to you
by asking everything of you.

untitled

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?
Just so much Jibberish;
We were walking on the Sea.
Surely you are
the Son of God.

Church Planter's Ballad

I am but dust.

God's breath enlivens this dust.

Bankruptcy. Ridicule. Hunger. Homelessness.
Fundamentalists. Power Brokers. Fear Mongers. Internet Trolls.

Cannot Harm dust.

Nor can they harm the breath of God.

Ikon

During prayer this morning, I pictured my own funeral. The artistic renderings of the cross and the empty tomb at the front of the chapel were more prominent than the casket.

If this proves true at my actual funeral, then the body lying in that casket will have been put to good use and will attain a glorious hope.

Tedious and Beautiful Work

Off and on for a long while now I have been working on hand copying the Bible. I am about 3/4 of the way through Genesis, and started doing this simply as a discipline, like the manual labor of the Desert Fathers. As such, it has been very fruitful to pay attention to what thoughts arise as I do this tedious work.

There are MANY distractions. Like: I should just read a Psalm? I love that earthy poetry so much more than I love copying this earthy genealogy. Or: should I play with switching the way I do my lower-case "a's"?

But many beautiful insights often come as well, and in surprising places when I force myself to slow down and engage with the text in this way. One of the most common blessings has been one I, given my own inclinations and interests, desperately need: I often think of some words of encouragement for others. This, I hope, helps them as I pause to shoot them a quick email or give them a call, and then get back to my self-imposed copyist work. But it also helps me appreciate the depth of the people around me and how blessed I am to have the opportunity to steward these relationships.

Incarnation is Hard Work

We constantly compare ourselves to others. In fact, it seem we are indeed quite good at praying without ceasing, so long as our prayer is like that of the Pharisee in Luke 18:11.

However, rather than finding our identity in the distance we can put between ourselves and others who are less successful, our deepest identity is rooted where we are like all other people - weak, broken, sinful, but sons and daughters of God.

This matters deeply to me, as I have recently been wrestling with ambition and the perceived need to achieve. Sometimes I mistakenly take thoughts like the above to allow, or even require, laziness. But, rightly understood, this shows me that hard work should come as a result of our love for others and the concomitant desire to serve them, and is not necessarily rooted in the desire to distance ourselves from other in order to compare. When rooted in love, this work is the recapitulation of the incarnation - an act that brings us to intimate closeness in Christ.

Hiding in Bold Exposure

"And only when the clear sky again looks through the broken roofs (of Cathedrals) and down upon grass and red poppies on broken walls - only then will I turn my heart again towards the places of this God."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zurathustra"

Many mourn the fall of Christendom, either through wails or battle cries or forwarded emails, but others celebrate it. Neitzsche and I would both fall into this latter category, though for fundamentally different reasons.

I see that now we have nowhere to hide but in Christ, and he, in our hiding, constantly pushes us out into the world in a new bravery birthed in love. Therefore the crumbling walls of cathedrals mark a time of enormous potential for a truly surrendered, and thus truly embodied, faith of boldness.