Advent=Reboot me

This is the beginning of Advent.  So what does Advent mean?

According to the dictionary it means coming, arrival of an important person, event or thing.

La llegada de una persona notable, cosa or evento.

Why did the people in the time of Christ need Him?  Why do we need Christ?

The world had fallen into darkness – the only thing left was rules and laws…there was no Spirit, no more hope, no more Love…only rules.

Isaiah says we don’t understand who God is or why He does the things he does. BUT WE KNOW that we can trust that if we get on the wrong course, God is the One to whom we must turn to straighten our path, to get us back on the right path.

Advent is like a reset – What happens when my computer locks up?  I kick it/throw it across the room, I get mad…and then finally I simply restart it… I hit the reset button.

Advent for the Jewish world in Jesus’ time was the start, I mean it was the beginning of a brand new world order.  It was the beginning of a new Kingdom…God was hitting the reset button and setting things right once and for all with the coming of Christ. 

God was saying “the Kingdom of God is coming to Earth – You’ve missed it all these years, you’re off course and I’m here to set it back on course…to point you in the right direction again…

This is NOT Jesus just coming here and fixing everything – This isn’t heaven on earth in an instant, all sunshine and lollypops…this is a rescue for us.  Like a rescue from a desert island.  When you get rescued, you aren’t home yet…you still have a journey to get to where you are going.  But thank God, you are on the rescue ship.

Advent for us is like the ship coming by the island.  Finally we can get back to the start of the journey…and what journey are we on?  We are on our journey to the Kingdom of God.  But not a Kingdom in some far away land…a Kingdom that is on our earth that starts with a change in our hearts and grows out of who God makes us to be.  It always starts within us…with us.

If you are like me, you started here last year.  Advent was a time to remember again why we do what we do.  It was a time to wake up and realize that the priorities that were so clear at Christ’s birth in Advent 2010 and Christmas 2010 are now so far and distant from where we wanted our lives to be NOW in 2011.  It’s time for us to reboot.

In the time of Christ…33, 34, 35 AD it must have been so clear to the followers of Christ that they were in the midst of a big change.  It was even clear to the religious leaders of the day…the Pharisees and Sadducees and even to the Romans because they all worked so hard to fight against the change that Jesus was calling for. 

Even now, our own hearts cry out NO NO…No more change.  STOP…I don’t want to give up my life as it is.  I don’t what to put God first.  I don’t want to give up control…not matter if I feel in control or not…I can’t trust God.  I can’t really give myself over to Christ and HIS ways.

BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT ADVENT IS ALL ABOUT. 

Mark says it so well at the beginning of his gospel:

“The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…”  The beginning…in other words, this is where it all starts…it starts by us recognizing that a change is coming.  But we can’t just recognize that Jesus is coming and that is it…we are called to more…We are called to begin a journey with Christ…and that journey starts back at the beginning…when Christ first comes to earth to show us His love and how we need to live like Him…

Mark goes on in the gospel to say… “I will send a messenger ahead of you a voice calling, ‘prepare the way for the Lord, make straight the paths for Him!’”

But what paths is Mark talking about?  The paths Mark are talking about are here…right here in our hearts.  We aren’t preparing the world, or even our neighborhood, or our cities, or our friends…we are preparing ourselves…we are asked by God to open the door to Him to give over to HIM our will and to FOLLOW Him.  No matter the plans and the inventions of our minds, If Christ’s love, Christ’s presence, TRUE LOVE has not overcome our hearts, then our path is not straight and our journey is NOT on the right path.

Return to Him this ADVENT…this season of beginning and YOU begin again your life.  Encounter God again…let Him make your path straight…ask Him to reboot to life and to come into your life so that Advent will truly be a new beginning, the coming of our Saviour, the start of a new way of LIFE.

Saving the world

I have this idea that all of our lives we are responding to our calling by either running away from it or running towards it.  I think that we are really doing both at the same time in different areas of our lives.  God has called us to something that involves saving the world.  Maybe not saving the entire world through one person, but collectively being a part of the saving Kingdom that does save the world.  Their are casualties though.  There are the hurt, the hungry, the poor.  There are the victims of crimes, bad parents, and abuse.  There are the victims of our own racism and classicism and nationalism that cause us to think for some moments that God must be asleep at the wheel.  In these moments when I see these things, this evidence of our collective fallen-ness, I wonder where God is.

I think that God is in me, working to bring His kingdom of peace and love and redemption and sharing and hope through me.  I want to believe it, and I want to know it.  But most of all I want to see it.  I really wish I could see it every day through the institutions that we say belong to God...places like churches and even places like hospitals and corporations with God's name on them, or in their mission statements.

I don't think that God's work is confined to those very infinite and small places.  I think that His work and His movement and His power is at work in all the people of this world.  I think that His hands are at work inside of each and every human being, because we all know and contemplate and suspect that there is something more to this life than the reality in front of us.  There are more than the atoms that make up our existence.  There is an awareness of the other, the more, the incredible that is both in us and through us and bigger than the collective US.  Thank God, there is more than just us.  There is the God in us.  I don't know what redemption and resurrection always looks like, but I know it when I see it, when I see one of us doing something wonderful for someone else.  Expand all these moments throughout all of creation, and you will start to see something more wonderful and more incredible that you can imagine.  Realize that these moments are taking place all across the world and in some way are connected and caused by the same wonderful force.  You will start to see the Other.  You will start to see God.  And this is only a start.

Slavery is not Modern But...

Slavery is not a modern concept, but it still exists.  A friend of mine is in jail right now because he is subjected to the whims of a person who can take advantage of his undocumented status.  In fact, he is trying to adjust status, but does not have the same rights as I do.  I only have the rights I do because I was lucky to have been born at an address in this country.  It's not just that one person can be controlled/blackmailed by another because of something like this.

Nothing is cut and dry when it comes to immigration, but blackmail is cut and dry...it is not right.  It's not right to manipulate another person because of the weaknesses they endure due to their color, religion, or status.  In this case two out of three are bad...bad wrong.  We may have all been created equally...but from that first breath, the inequality begins...  "I am so sorry..."

I don't like being blind.

I don't think I can accept "blind faith" I don't think it is really faith at all to be act like I am blind. The world is hard to accept along side of the professions of faith that I try to live out... My faith is also hard to accept along side of what I see in my world every day too. Just because it's hard, doesn't mean I should just give myself a lobotomy when it comes to faith. I think it means that I need to think harder, pray more, and accept that becoming more uncomfortable with my world and with my faith is not a bad thing. Rather it is something that makes my life and my faith deeper and richer. A good scotch was not made over night...

911

no more words about this day...

Loss is a fact of life

September is a month of loss.  We lost a lot of things on 9-11.  This month is the month I lost my Mom and found out about the loss of a close friend.  It's the month that so many things went away from me and away from our physical world that it makes me question the eternal...the other.

Pain is like that.  It makes me think only of what is in front of me and focuses me on the pain and away from the reality of the "other."  But the "other" is so much bigger than the pain, and even much more real.  It's part of being a reluctant believer that makes believing in the "other" so hard sometimes.  We are all reluctant to believe when the pain and the sadness start to take over.  But holding on to the "other" is the only thing that really allows the pain to heal us and make us something more than we were before.

If we don't grow, then only bitterness and hatefulness and soreness remain.  But if we grow beyond the pain, then we point the way to the "other" that all of us so desperately need.  That other, of course, is love.

art is life.

art is life...life is art. there is not such thing as imitation. you are living it as you go creating a blob, a masterpiece, a great triumph or a terrible tragedy. you really don't know what art is if you don't think that you are making it each and every day. your words form ideas and concepts and stories. your life continues the weaving of a tapestry whose threads bind together actions, interactions, relationships, and pull and tug upon the fabrics of other's lives. they are all jumbled up together, not in a mess, but in a unique 3 dimensional piece that has so complicated a shape/organic and changing each nano-second. what is that but beauty...art. life is art.

like the wind...

There is supposed to be some mysterious quality about the lives of Christians. I don't mean that we look weird because we go to the same places on Sundays or that we don't live what we preach... I mean that when people look at our lives, they should be asking themselves..."just why do they do that?" "Why do they give up their money like it's nothing?; Why do they hang out with such an eclectic group?; Why do they not fit in to one political ideology or another like the rest of the world?; Why do those people give their time away to vagrants, losers, outcasts, and _________ (you fill in your blanks)."

We should not only look different in our ways, but we shouldn't be conformed to one "human" definition or another of what this world says a Christian should be. We should be so moved by God that we begin to take on God's quality of mystery. What we do, how we live, what we support and who we hang out with should always be influenced by God's Spirit moving within us. And who can know God's Spirit so as to understand it. It is like the wind. We know now where it came from or where it is going...but we feel its presence, and it moves us.

Alabama...land of the incarcerated

Representative Hammond of Decator has been quoted as saying of the bill:

''We're trying not to be punitive and mean, but we do want to accomplish our mission,'' Hammon said. ''We want to discourage illegal immigrants from coming to Alabama and prevent those that are already here from putting down roots.''

This is not such a simple issue. The roots have already been established...some for generations. This is a human rights issue as well as an economic one. The human rights issue is that these persons have bought homes, fill apartment complexes and opened legitimate businesses in Alabama. They have children that are born here and some that have grown up here for many years. These children, both undocumented and citizens know no other culture than that of Alabama.

The economic issue has brought together some strange bed-fellows like business groups and human rights organizations. Both recognize that not allowing families to rent apartments, get license plates for their cars, or even ride the bus to school would not only be punitive, it would be "mean" and "hateful." It would destroy some local economies. The same people who celebrate Latino culture one day and eat their tacos and tamales are ready to throw Latino families out of their apartments and trailers and deny them any legal way to simply exist within the borders of Alabama. This behavior is deplorable. To paraphrase Debs, if one man's very existence is "illegal" then I too am illegal. I will stand with you, fight with you, and give you refuge under my roof.

words are just more "poop" but yu know what I mean.

I don't know how to give spiritual context to what I am feeling right now. I don't know how to give emotional context to what I am feeling right now. I don't even really know what to do.

"poop" is a word that we assign to stuff that we have in abundance, that we don't know what to do with, that our lives kind of accidentally step in and get caught up in. So that's what I have now...a bunch of words that just mean shit.

sometimes you just want to throw up

I just want to throw up...I ate a bad meal and it doesn't sit well with me. Sometimes I eat some bad stuff, I hear bad stuff, I see bad stuff, and I can't fix it, heal it, or change it. It just sits there and makes me feel so very sick. We need healing...we need a doctor that can patch things up without all the killing, the shooting, the torturing. We accept dictators because they bring stability...but stability at the price of freedom and lives. We accept revolution as long as it brings to power people that don't hurt anyone beyond their own borders. Containment isn't a policy that I can accept. But how can we fight against tyrants without violence, guns, and bombs? We say that is the only language they understand. Maybe it's the only language we understand. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. God please show me how that works.

Truth in Numbers

There is truth in all kinds of things. Today, I see truth in numbers. They do not lie, they only exist. They are what they are, and they are only moved around and changed by those of us who would use them. We use them to assign value, to count how many or how few. We use them to grade each other. While numbers don't feel or care about which number they are, we crave certain numbers, certain scores, certain thresholds. Salaries, bank accounts, zip codes, ACT scores, IQ scores, and net worth. Numbers are things that we think are so very important to us. But to them, they are just what they are. And so are we.

Happy Love Day

So what about the flowers and the gifts and the cards. What I care about are the relationships that they celebrate. If the relationship isn't there, then all the gifts in the world are just dust reconfigured that will go back to dust in the end. The eternal thing is the Love that is shared between us. It is this gift that keeps on giving, causing both pain and heartache as I open myself up ever more to its power to change me. and break me down.

In the end I am nothing, and Love is everything...

I love you Love.

Some times I wish that I could just go to the doctor and get them to tell me what it is that is wrong with me. I wish that there were some diagnosis, some disease, some problem that they could name and tell me, so that I would know why I don’t have a life that is perfect, why I do stupid things some times, why I some times don’t meet every one's expectations or why I let people down, or why I hurt people’s feelings. Some days I just wish there were something that would explain why some people like me and some people don’t...and I wish that there were some magic pill that I could take that would realign that part of me that is broken and put it all back into place so that I would never let you down, and never hurt your feelings, and never get upset and angry, and never ever would get hurt myself. I mean, I can’t control what other people do, but oh how I wish I really wouldn’t care what people say, or what they think about me. Oh how I wish the only thing I cared about was the thing that God cares about...and once I got to be that perfect little spiritual person...well rounded in all areas of my life...balanced, enlightened, peaceful, and full of love... God how I pray for that pill to be invented so that I can just get there...don’t you?

But life isn’t perfect and neither are we. We don’t live in a world where perfection is even a possibility. Our bodies and our minds and our emotions may have been created by God...but somewhere long before you and I came along, the train left the track and the path to enlightenment became...well...broken, fallen, caved in, impassible. Truly, any attempt on our part to reach perfection, Nirvana, wholeness, whatever...any attempt at that will most predictably fall short, because there is not a way that we can get there with the minds, the souls, the hearts, the emotions that we have been born with. It is really only by some other way that we can even see and believe that we are falling a bit short of the ideal. Somewhere deep inside ourselves if we just gave into our impulses, followed our own way, ceased to live by any law that was not governed by our own ferocious appetites, that we would consume everything and everyone that came across our path. In fact, we know that somewhere on our road to fulfillment we know that if we only thought of ourselves and what we wanted and thought that we needed without any regard to any one else...we know that living like that would most certainly lead to such a melt down that we would be consumed, eaten up...melt down Chernobyl style...there would be nothing left of us or our souls and we would be even more empty and malnourished that the day we started our journey to fulfillment.

So what is it...what is out there that truly leads us? What is it that is out there and why do we need it? Why do we know somehow...deep within ourselves that God is somehow behind this world and its rules and its systems and the deep deep deep connections that bind us...each of us...one to another. How do we know this in the midst of a world that is...most obviously....broken? We know this, I believe, because in the midst of a broken and fallen world, God has been calling out to us from the deep. I don’t mean that we hop in the submarine like Jules Verne and go searching for God...I mean He is calling out to us from that place that exists within us so deep and so far down, that it isn’t really something that one could say is a part of this world. It is that place that is so deep within us that it is still untouched by this world...it is other world...it is God world...it is spiritual world...it is the uncorrupted...or maybe somewhat corrupted (God please forgive all the ellipses, but how to say this without them)...BUT nonetheless it is more God and Good (capital G...whatever that means) than fallen. Ok...it is more like what God intended than anything else that makes up the Who of who we are.

But it sits within this human shell of a body. And, it sometimes whispers, sometimes screams at us to tell us that the way we are going, the things we are saying, and sometimes doing and even thinking...these things are not what God intended. They maybe close...real close, but we still have a lot of work to do to get back to the intended use of our thoughts, our actions, our connections, our relationships, our communities, our ministries, our lives and the connections that make up this entire thing we call LIFE on earth. Yes, what I am saying may be so scientifically unprovable, but doesn’t it feel right? Is love something we can see, smell, and look at under a microscope? Is it nonetheless true? Real? Present? Even a driving force that binds not just couples, but families, communities, cities, nations, and perhaps the human race as a whole?

And where does this love come from? Where does the example of the perfect Love come from? We know that none of us match up to this unseen standard, so where does the standard reside? Who created it if not the Creator? Who put the standards in our hearts/heads/beings if not the Creator who is Love itself? And if we have this part of the Creator within us...like some sci-fi movie...that part of ourselves that isn’t really a part of this fallen world and our fallen-ness...this part of us is crying out to connect with the other parts of the Creator that are in you and me and Joe and Jesus and Chen and Jayesh and Pierre and Hanz. In fact that part of us isn’t just trying to connect to them, but it is screaming at us to try and reconnect us to our Creator Himself. And it is desperately trying to make not only these connections real and present in our lives, but it is trying to work its way through the more fallen parts of our bodies and our lives and our broken systems and broken value systems and political systems and it is so desperately trying to change them from the inside out. Like a virus or an infection it is trying to change us and change this world at a molecular level...metaphorically speaking, of course...so that even the assumptions that we never question, we start to questions, we start to challenge and think about and compare to the example of Love that we saw in Christ, that we feel in our beings, and to throw out these assumptions that don’t match up and become so un-like the fallen-ness that is all around us and so much more like the perfect-ness that is our Creator.

But perfectness does not mean right-ness or correct-ness. Perfect-ness means love. It means true Love in all things, in all responses, in all relationships, in all encounters, in all communities, in all nations, in all interactions between all people and races...It means that we must get to know what true love means by getting to know Who true love is. It is already a living and breathing part of who we are...it has just become subdued by the corrupted portions of who we are. God has not changed, Love has not changed, rather we have simply fallen away from what we have been made to be. This entire existence that we have is all about getting back TOWARDS the Loveliness that was intended to be the result of all our efforts and AWAY from the selfishness that began our fall away from the Loveliness to begin with.

I will never be there completely until, at some point, through some miracle transformation, I am rescued, transformed, changed in some eternal way. But Love/God is with me, with you, with US as individuals, as couples, as families, as nations, as churches, as humans...and He will never ever go away. May that part of us that is Love, that was forever created to be Love and share Love and give Love praise Him and infect us so that we may every day become more like Him and less like the fallenness that causes us to question His true Love for us.

the Lady

Aung San Suu Kyi is described by a Newsweek writer as "float[ing] like some otherworldly presence, calm and cool as others are flushed and frenetic."





This is a woman who must have a sense of urgency since she was released after years of house arrest. She must know that she might have to return to that prison at any time the "generals" get tired of her freedom. Still...this peace and seeming calm in the midst of a storm points to a serenity and calm that must come from a sense of purpose and a trust in things greater than oneself.





She is quoted later as saying "My very top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves." What a very healthy point to remember for someone who is used to leading others. My own trap is to think my advocacy work is so dependent upon my own efforts for its success. In other words, I struggle not only to do the right thing...but I also struggle to maintain control of the outcomes. Suu Kyi, in this little slice of her life, is portrayed as both having the confidence of one who is doing all she can do...and then leaving the outcomes to be whatever they may be. In my mind, that is truly freedom.





I want that freedom. I want to be free from expectations of outcomes and letting those expectations rule my emotions, my esteem, my image of myself. I simply want to be and to do what I feel called to do...not without consequence, but without a specific expectation that will define "good" and "bad" or "right outcome" and "wrong outcome" when such outcomes are truly out of my control. Suu Kyi must know how long she has fought and what little ground has been given politically by the generals in her land. She must know that by some measures her work has accomplished so little in tangible results. But, deep down she must know that the fight both the means and the end. And so it is with us. All of us on this earth. The apostle Paul said it like this...we are running a race. Let us run it as best we can. We are not running it to beat anyone else or in competition with anyone...we are running it to run it because it is what we are called to do. To loose the race is to quit it. To win it is simply to continue to run it...and by running it we are neither in control of the outcome or Lord over our destiny...we are simply on the way and at arrived at the right destination all at the same time. The means has become the end has become the means...and on and on.

climbing out of an abyss

Depression sneaks up on you. At times, I feel like I fall into an abyss, like I run up onto a sink hole in the middle of the road at 80 miles per hour with no time to make a correction. Suddenly you find yourself into something...sinking deeper and deeper. Panic takes over, your mind knows it wants to think...you try to stop the panic and the fear. You want the reason and the logic to bring you back to what you know you believe. You try like hell to remember the faith that guides you and the Love that you so strongly believe in...and yet like a stun gun...the fear and anxiety paralyzes you and keeps you from struggling or even thinking. It's like it brings you to the point where you cannot move...it's a mental paralysis of the will. Confidence seeps out of you like blood from a wound. And with it flows the energy and the peace that is the foundation of a sane life. It's like sanity becomes illusive and out of reach. You don't know where you are relative to where you were when you could think and act and not quake in fear. It's like being in a prison. there are no locks on the doors, but you still can't leave. What is happening?
Why does this brain operate this way? There's got to be a drug, a therapy, an exercise, something that brings us back to reality...I'm not talking about a reality that is based upon the smoke and mirrors of this world's values... I'm talking about the reality of truth that surpasses the made up value systems our society has concocted.

Most of all, I just want to escape the overwhelming fear and anxiety that can grip me and drag me under. No longer can I believe that there is no power in the forces of our mind that bring us into depressive states. But I must know what can be done to bring me out of this and to escape the undertow that seems unrelenting in its pull. There has to be hope in a salvation from this way and this path. There is hope. Escape of the grip of this horrible power. I preach that God can do all these things. It just isn't obvious to me how His salvation comes in the midst of these horrible places.