Life with Bart

Advent=Reboot me

2011-11-27T07:50:00.001-08:00

Thisis the beginning of Advent. So what doesAdvent mean?

Accordingto the dictionary it means coming, arrival of an important person, event orthing.

La llegada de una persona notable, cosa or evento.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thisis NOT Jesus just coming here and fixing everything – This isn’t heaven onearth 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…youstill have a journey to get to where you are going. But thank God, you are on the rescue ship.

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

Ifyou 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 thepriorities that were so clear at Christ’s birth in Advent 2010 and Christmas2010 are now so far and distant from where we wanted our lives to be NOW in2011. It’s time for us to reboot.

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

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

BUTTHAT IS EXACTLY WHAT ADVENT IS ALL ABOUT.

Marksays it so well at the beginning of his gospel:

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

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

Butwhat paths is Mark talking about? Thepaths Mark are talking about are here…right here in our hearts. We aren’t preparing the world, or even ourneighborhood, or our cities, or our friends…we are preparing ourselves…we areasked by God to open the door to Him to give over to HIM our will and to FOLLOWHim. No matter the plans and theinventions of our minds, If Christ’s love, Christ’s presence, TRUE LOVE has notovercome our hearts, then our path is not straight and our journey is NOT onthe right path.

Returnto Him this ADVENT…this season of beginning and YOU begin again your life. Encounter God again…let Him make your pathstraight…ask Him to reboot to life and to come into your life so that Adventwill truly be a new beginning, the coming of our Saviour, the start of a newway of LIFE.

Saving the world

2011-11-19T09:10:00.001-08:00

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...

2011-09-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-12T10:32:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

no more words about this day...

Loss is a fact of life

2011-09-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-03-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-03-18T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-07T07:04:00.001-08:00

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.

2011-02-25T14:01:00.001-08:00

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

2011-02-22T15:25:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-02-12T21:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-05T20:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

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.

When tragedy strikes

2010-08-21T09:01:00.001-07:00

It is like no other thing in life to me. Tragedy just strikes. It is like a blow from a fist that you did not see coming. At first, you are stunned. You know something just happened. You know you didn't see it coming. You're trying to process it. What just happened? Then the pain starts. Ouch...that really hurts...no, that REALLY hurts. There's nothing you could have done to prevent it, there's no time for regrets. There's just that pain.

That's what death of a friend is like. That's what death is like at all when you are experiencing it as one who is left behind.

On Friday morning Angel Cuevas Hernandez passed away from us. We can no longer touch the soul that was his, we can no longer make him laugh, or wonder what will Angel do next. We just know that he has drifted away...quietly and almost peacefully.

But it still hits the rest of us like a punch in the face. I love you Angel...I miss you Angel. I feel so much pain at your passing.

Jesus didn't get the memo...

2010-08-12T05:51:00.000-07:00

Jesus once said, "Do you think I have come to bring peace on this earth?" Well, duh...of course. unless this is a trick question...as most of them are. I'm going to say, yes. Yes, you did come to bring peace on the earth. All that beating spears into plowshares, loving your neighbor, good Samaritan stuff... Did Jesus not get the memo?

"No, I have come to bring division." Ahh crap...it was a trick question.

I read this and I am confused. Aren't you? After all what is the point of the message of reconciliation to God through Christ? What is the message of love that Jesus brought. Didn't all the miracles, all the healings, all of the stuff about seeing the father by seeing him...didn't all that intend to bring about the "kingdom on earth?" And isn't the kingdom on earth all green pastures, country songs, and lemonade on a warm afternoon? Peace, right?

It seems like it should be so, but just for one moment, try to step out and respond to what you think is the voice of God. For just one moment try to stand up and say...I think God is calling me to do ____________. Now, the crap starts flying...trust me. Following the way of Christ inevitably puts us in contradiction to 99.9% of the rest of the world. But it doesn't entitle us to scream at the world, to belittle the world, or to shove our ideas down the throats of the world. Our calling is to simply walk down the new path and follow the way of Christ. Sometimes, this quiet and humble way can put us in the way of of some pretty powerful forces. Sometimes, our path takes us into on-coming traffic. At that point, there is division...there is conflict...there is not "peace" in the external, feel good, not going to bother no-body kind of way. In fact, sometimes just following the path puts us in a place of such contradiction that others might feel threatened, judged, and alienated by us. I'm not saying we intend to do those things...but it happens.

Example...an entire wealthy family in the Atlanta area decides that they have too much, their lifestyle is too wasteful, they have to make a change. They don't ask anyone else to do it. They don't say the world of McMansions and car payments, and credit cards, and perpetual shopping sprees is bad...they just say, "we're going to try another way." They decided cut all their expenses in half and use the savings to do some really stupid things. Things like put wells in remote villages in Africa, build schools, and teach people how to make things that will lift their families out of poverty.

They didn't go around to their neighbors, family, and friends and tell them how selfish and wrong they were. They just decided that they had to do this. It was their calling, it was their responsibility. The reaction they got from their friends and from their family members outside the home was surprising...or maybe not. Many friends felt judged, even though they weren't judged. Many friends cut off communication with them or wouldn't visit them in their new, smaller, and "dangerous" neighborhood home. Many family thought they were crazy and felt like they couldn't maintain a relationship with them.

I have not come to bring peace... I don't think Jesus is really saying he sets out to bring division in the same sense that we understand these thing in our secular world. I think he is saying that we are called by Him to follow Him, and that His path for us is different. Yes, it is divided from the path of 99.9% of the rest of the world. If we choose to follow that path, it does not make us special, it does not entitle us to anything above anyone else. All it means is that we have chosen a different way. We are not on the same road...we are on the road to follow Christ. Peace will come... It will be in our hearts. It will be a peaceful and satisfied mind. It will be a peaceful soul. Why peace in the midst of confusion and division? It will come because Christ shows us that what the world cares about the most, is the stuff that matters the least. Through Christ we will know true love. We will know honest relationships. We will know that the things of this world will continue to pass away, and that as long as we continue to seek satisfaction in them, we will be hungry and thirsty. We will know that when we drink of the true cup and eat the true bread, we will never again hunger, and never again thirst.

Where is my heart?

2010-08-06T04:27:00.000-07:00

It is easy to be angry in this world. It is easy to think that what is going on is personally directed at me. It is easy for me to think that I am the center of my world. It is what I have been taught since birth. When I cried, my mommy came to me. When I complained, something changed. When I acted up, I was quickly disciplined. My world responds to me. Therefore, I must be the most important thing in it.

Then I sit quietly for a minute, and I realize that there are a lot of things going on in the world that happen irregardless of me. For a moment I catch a glimpse of how off base my natural thinking and assumed perspective must be. I, the center of my world? The politicos, musicians, customer service representatives, all waiting for my response, my engagement, my opinion, my blessing? It sounds so absurd, but it is exactly the natural state of mind for most of us. The world is reacting to me. The world is waiting for me. The world is designed to screw me. The world is designed to support me.

I even bring this paradigm to my perceptions of God. I filter my readings of the Bible, my beliefs about Christ and what salvation and liberation are to this. I elevate myself to the very center of my universe. But not only my universe. I actually must think that I am the center of my spirituality, as well as my physical world. How lonely a place this leaves me in.

Luke, 12:34 contains the statement from Jesus "Where your treasure is, there your heart be, also." Regardless of all the treasures of this life, I think the most corrupting, the most obvious, and most likely the one at the foundation of it all for us...is the treasure of thinking it is all about me, first and foremost. I can be the grandest fighter for human rights, the greatest general on the battlefield fighting for the cause of freedom, or the nastiest criminal, or the worst human being to walk the planet...and I can still be thinking that it is all about me. I can still be of the perspective that it is all centered around me... My treasure is me.

Now imagine a world where you and I are not the center of it. Where God actually created all these things and we are but a one little part of it. It was not exactly just created for your personal enjoyment. The experience you just had in the drive through at McDonalds was not just because of you and for you. The way you were treated was not just good because you are good, or bad because the world is out to screw you...because the world is composed of human beings just like you, created by God, just like you...who have husbands and kids and worries, and joys, and thoughts about life and death, just like you.

So there's really no difference between me and you and everyone else in this world. Irregardless of socio-economic condition, our race, our religion, or the country of our birth and residence, it doesn't matter...it doesn't make us any better or worse than anyone else. We are all children of God, we are all a part of the same family of God. We are all one. Even the divisions that we emphasize like legal/illegal, rich/poor, black/white/Hispanic /Jew/gentile/Arab/Shiite/Sunni...who cares? The true treasure that our heart should be longing for is a heart that loves everyone. I don't mean the feel good, gushy, mushy love that actually has no action that comes from it. I am talking about the good Samaritan, serving and loving one another with a love that could only come from God kind of Love. The kind of Love that we have to capitalize. The kind of Love that we can't even understand or really describe very well. The kind of Love that continues to amaze us and teach us as it extends us and forces us to do things for people in the name of the God that gives us that Love.

eating with the "unclean," drinking the real Koolaid

2010-04-27T16:05:00.000-07:00

Peter was living on the edge in Acts 11. He was eating with the enemy...the gentiles. What a travesty. There are a lot of unclean folks here amongst us. The homeless, the poor, the minimum wagers, the drug addicts, alcoholics, undocumented, and unemployed. There are probably more to add to that list, but most of these groups are somehow alienated from our churches and our communities of faith. In many ways they are alienated from community in general and are forced to form their own. Then we fault them for having "bad" influences or not "mainstreaming" by having their own counter culture. But didn't we force them into that culture to begin with?

Peter was shown in a series of visions that there is no such thing as "unclean" when it comes to people. No one we should stay away from. No one who deserves to be on the outside. These definitions, these lines in the sand are human constructs of human kingdoms designed to hoard resources and protect power. These things get in the way of God's kingdom and His purposes. How can we love our neighbor if we can't reach him/her for our own possessions, our own fences, our own borders? What is getting in the way of this most basic and central command...to love one another as God loves us?

We have worked hard and continue to work hard to exclude and define one another. We like definitions and boundaries. In the health care debate is the haves versus the have nots. In commerce it is frequently the business owners versus the employees. In immigration it is the "illegals" versus the "legals." It Alabama's gubernatorial election it is the Spanish versus English. It is our way versus their way. The problem is there will always be an us and a them until we follow God's call to Love. Love doesn't enforce boundaries and differences...it breaks them down. Our worth is not in what we own or what others don't own. It's not in how much power "we" have and how much power "they" don't have. Our worth is only measured by how much God loves us...and he doesn't love any one of us any more than anyone else...or another way...he loves us so much, that any distinction just doesn't matter.

So how do we know what we love and what we are actually worshiping? How do we know if we have "drunk the Koolaid of this world's message, or bought the true message of faith of our God?" From Revelation 21: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life."

Drinking from the water of this world is like drinking from a mirage, because that's all it is. The water of this world is the stuff we are taught is important from birth to death by the institutions of this world...not God. We learn from the earliest age that we are supposed to please everyone. Please our parents, please our teachers, live up to standards that we aren't supposed to question. We aren't supposed to question, just to obey and live up to someone else's standards. Where the hell did these standards come from? Not from love...not from God! We have to throw all that crap to the wind because it's not real. Approval from others isn't worth anything. We have to follow the path of love, build the real kingdom of love...nothing more...nothing less. The real water that quenches our thirst isn't worldly...it's heavenly. It's real life...real living to live a life of Love...called by God...called by Christ to live a life like Him. It is a life of asking, seeking, searching and loving...but it is not a life that checks in with everyone else before stepping out in faith and adventure.

We have to throw out our politics and replace it with the politics of Love. We have to throw out our economics and replace it with an economic system based on loving God and loving one another. We have to throw out all our selfish motives and rules in our relationships and adopt only the rule of Love.

It's not about what we put first. It's not even about priorities. It's about context and perspective. Ours has to change. If we have priorities, then we put something first, then move onto something else second, etc... That kind of hierarchy doesn't fit in when we talk about the Kingdom of God. You don't put the Kingdom on a priority list. You don't put love on a priority list. Love is not Job 1...it is the ONLY job, the only priority on the list, it is an either/or. That's what Jesus was saying when he said you can't serve two masters. We only have an either/or choice. We choose to serve Him...to serve the embodiment of Love...follow the path of Love in every case, in every part of our lives...or we choose to follow something else. No priorities...just a choice...a life long choice that has eternal and forever implications for you, for your family, for your money, your politics, your religion, for everything. If what you think you have done up until now doesn't have that kind of far reaching effect, then you haven't realized that you are only giving lip service to the idea of following a path of Love, the path of God. This choice is pervasive. This choice is eternal. This choice is fundamental.

That's why some of us have to completely start over. A house built on the wrong foundation won't stand. No matter what you do to it, unless you rebuild the foundation, you cannot strengthen the house. It will fall. That's why it's not a sad thing to tear down everything and start over. Like a surgeon going in and cutting you open...it's going to hurt, there will be pain...but there is life in that pain...there is love in all that temporary destruction...there is healing in those hands that wield such a seemingly dangerous instrument. Let God cut away, dissect us, strip us down, and build us back up the right way. Let us lay down our lives and yield to His hand. That is the only way we will truly live.

And I feel fine...

2010-02-14T18:29:00.000-08:00

I do feel fine. Not great, not bad...but fine. There is a certain goodness to fine. A certain place where you can mourn your mom, your college friend, and your work buddy...all who died to soon...in Chattanooga, in Africa, and in Haiti...living a good life. I still miss them...but yet, I feel fine for having loved them and danced with them for a while.

I'm selfish and thank you very much.

2010-01-28T06:25:00.000-08:00

1 Corinthians 13 is a chapter that describes what love is and what love is not. It seems so obvious that our response should be to just love the right way and get on with life. It seems so obvious that I must be missing a few steps. Nothing that really produces results is that easy. Just try P90X for a few weeks and you'll know what I mean.

So if what is the hard part? I think the hardest part is actually recognizing how I actually act towards other people. I go throughout my day treating people the way I think they should be treated in the moment. Occasionally, I recognize that I'm a little short or angry in my response to someone. But, for the most part, I'm a pretty good guy...at least I think I am. I think of others first, don't I? I do good things for people and that's o.k. isn't it?

But then I started reading a book by Anthony De Mello who says hey...you may be doing good things...but have you ever looked at WHY you are doing them? What? WHY I AM DOING GOOD THINGS? It's not enough to just do these things? Now I have to worry about WHY I am doing them?

Well De Mello has a point. He thinks that we are all basically selfish...even the "good" people, and that if we really took a good look at ourselves we would see that even our "good" and "holy" actions have some selfish motivations behind them. So I took him up on his challenge, and I started to reflect about nearly every little thing that I did. I kind of got outside of myself to think about the WHY behind even my supposedly good actions. And what did I find? To my amazement, I found that I had selfish reasons for doing even good things for people. Maybe it was because I didn't want to disappoint someone and cause myself bad feelings. Maybe it was because I wanted to look good in front of someone or I wanted to procure someones favor. But nearly every time, I could look at my actions and deep down find a selfish reason for them. Now, I had to ask myself...is that love? I mean...at least I was doing something good right? But, if it wasn't done out of love, was it really good FOR ME, I mean...for my spiritual growth...for me. Now doesn't that sound even more selfish? Maybe so, maybe not.

Now what came next is what was really...really surprising to me. I found that if I just became aware of my motivations...IF I just examined myself...not JUDGED myself...but just became aware of my motivations...somehow, almost magically I changed. I didn't try to change. I didn't say to myself..."you're a bad person because you have these motivations..." I just said..."aha...look at that...how interesting..." AND WAh-LAh, like David Copperfield waving a wand, I no longer wanted to please someone, I just wanted to do what was good. I no longer was trapped by this desire to be needed by someone else...I just wanted to love other people and do things for them. BY simply becoming aware of what was going on inside of me...I became free of my selfishness and somehow filled with love for others.

It wasn't a formula, and exercise, or anything that I did...I think it was God working though His Holy Spirit to change me and to make me aware of His Love. I can't describe WHY this spiritual change happened...I just know that it did, and I know that it can happen for you if you only become aware of what you are doing. I never felt like God was trying to make me feel bad about my motivations...If I felt like that, I would probably try to hide from them and never be free of them. Only by facing them...recognizing them...and just becoming AWARE of them...did they change. I recognized that God knows who I am...but when I faced it...when I saw it...then change in me came...I knew at that moment that God loved me just as I was and will always love me just as I am. BUT...I know that He sees who I can become when I drop all the stuff that is not LOVE...that is not HIM. When that happens, I know that I will be truly free and forever changed.

Of course, this experience wasn't a one time thing that I can now walk away from and be forever different...It was a lesson that I must always be AWARE of my motivations. It's like I need to always be looking at myself from an objective point of view to ask what is behind my actions, my thoughts, my decisions, my motivations. AWARENESS is a full time job...but the rewards and the benefits are divine.

Freedom!

2010-01-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

In Luke 4:14-21, we have Jesus who has just returned to his home town after becoming quite famous throughout the region. He has already started his ministry and has actually performed some miracles. He has started teaching in the synagogues and has impressed everyone with his knowledge and his style. People who hear him are amazed because they haven’t heard anyone teach like he does. It’s like his words are coming alive to them and making sense. They don’t just hear the same old blah, blah, blah from the Pharisees about being clean or obeying all the rules. Suddenly…the scriptures mean something and they start to see God as THEIR God…interested in THEM…Loving them…caring about THEM both as a nation and as individuals. In the midst of extreme poverty, persecution, and living as under the power of foreign invaders, they started to have hope that they were not insignificant…their lives were not meaningless…these people were NOT worthless.

So what was so powerful about Jesus’ message? I mean, he hardly says anything…just one sentence after reading the passage from Isaiah. What was it he read?

“El Espíritu de Señor esta sobre mi,

Por cuanto me ha ungido

Para anunciar buenas nuevas a los pobres.

Me ha enviado a proclamar libertad a los cautivos

Y dar vista a los ciegos,

A poner en libertad a los oprimidos,

A pregonar el ano del favor del Señor.”

These words are incredibly powerful. They told the people that in the midst of all suffering…in the midst of all the pain…in the midst of their seemingly insignificant little lives God announces to them (and to us) that there is another way of looking at our lives. You think you are captive to your limitations? You think that being poor or uneducated or under someone else’s control keeps you from living your life to the Glory of God? Do you think that you are powerless to change this world because you don’t have equal status or because your only a woman or your only a child or your only an immigrant or your not rich or whatever? Jesus announces a new vision to the world. ¡Libertad! Freedom! Like Mel Gibson shouting in Braveheart… “Libertad a los cautivos!” You are not bound by anything. You are free…and God’s favor is upon us.

Repent!

2010-01-14T08:40:00.000-08:00

When I was in high school, I was always invited by my Baptist friends to their revival services in the Fall and Spring. It was kind of fun, because you saw people in church that you never would have dreamed would have been interested. O.k...so I was a bit judgemental in the day too. The sermons were the same year after year no matter who was preaching them...we were going to hell and we needed to repent. It's a familiar theme when your growing up because preachers everywhere think they need to scare us straight. Sex, drugs, rock and roll...watch out youngsters...they will get your soul. I used to think that this message of "repent" meant "turn or burn." In other words, change your life now or you may die unexpectedly tomorrow and end up in hell...oooooohhhhhh....very scary stuff. And it was scary, especially if you were a hormonal teenager on the verge of committing sin every day with temptations out there trying to snag you. The devil lurked under every rock and behind every tree. Watch out!

We still think about sin and repentance in that way. But in Jesus' day there was a very different idea of repentance. Our focus is on gaining some future glory in heaven by quote "not enjoying" our life too much down here. In fact we glorify sin with our idea that we have to somehow "suffer for God" by doing right on this earth, so that we can gain treasure in heaven after we die. That idea of repentance is so limited that it completely misses the point of why we turn to God in the first place...relationship. If God is all about punishment for our screw-ups and catching us doing wrong...then what place is there for Love and Grace. If God is all about obeying the rules, then why did Jesus have such a hard time with the law abiding Pharisees? They were perfect according to the rules...but they completely missed the point.

So what is repentance if it is not turning away from whatever behaviors we have identified as the big "sins." Repentance is really waking up to a new reality. Before we wake up and realize that we live in a world where God is our Father and we are His children, we live our lives dependent on ourselves.

The prodigal son parable shows this to us so vividly. He tried so hard to "make it." We try to organize our lives and be in control. We try to save enough, earn enough, impress the right people, and acquire power and control. Left to our own devices, we will build a life that is isolated, lonely, and spiritually and emotionally poor. We become like walking corpses...in a spiritual sense. Our solutions to our most desperate problems can be things that really hurt us in the end...greed, jealousy, abuse of drugs and alcohol...these aren't behaviors that God wants us to avoid because he doesn't want us to have "fun" in this world. These are things that kill our joy and keep us from having good relationships with Him and each other. These are things that kill our soul and keep us from experiencing "heaven" on this earth.

In the parable of the prodigal son...Jesus is saying that living life dependent on yourself IS hell. You don't have to wait to go to heaven or hell... How you live your life today is either heaven or hell on this earth. The prodigal son had everything he needed at home, but he didn't realize it. It's as if his eyes were closed to the tremendous love, support, safety and community that he had. He was asleep. He just needed to wake up to his reality. His situation is no different from ours today. He thought he could do better. He thought that if only he could rely on himself, be free to follow his own path and seek his own desires, he would be so much better off than living in his father's house under his father's authority. Sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes out of pride, we think the same thing. We don't realize that the life we are wanting to live, the happiness that we are seeking, the satisfaction that eludes us, can only be found by living in relationship to our Heavenly Father and accepting the reality that He is the source of all good things.

When we accept this, and when we choose to "wake up" to this new reality, then our lives start to make sense. We begin to actually have purpose and understanding. We begin to understand our world and our place in it. The prodigal son finally got it. He tried so hard to live life under his own rules, based upon his own ideas. He tried so hard to prove that he was right...then one day...working and eating and sleeping amongst the pigs he was hired to tend to, he woke up. Suddenly, he remembered who he was:

"When he came to his senses, he said 'how many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' So he got up and went to his father."

He was the son of a wealthy father whose servants ate better and had better lodging than he did. All he had to do was go home. All he had to do was live as a son of his Father...all he had to do was turn around and go back home.

And when he came back, how was he treated? Jesus tells it this way..."Quick bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

God doesn't want us to repent so that he can punish us. We are already punishing ourselves whenever and wherever in our lives we don't give to Him. If we aren't asking God to live through us and lead us...to show us what He wants in our lives...then we are missing the blessings that we would find by living a life in Him...in relationship with Him. He loves us, and He wants to shower us with blessings...with peace and love and understanding. Let's stop fighting Him and accept our place as His sons and daughters beloved and cared for. Let's accept that we can be alive again...once we were lost...now we can be found..."bring the fattened calf and kill it...let's have a feast and celebrate." May our lives be feasts shared with God and each other and may our celebration spill over to the entire world.

I question my baptsim

2010-01-04T07:48:00.000-08:00

Do you know what baptism is? When I was a young baby, my parents carried me down the aisle of to a smiling and expectant pastor. He eagerly took me, said some words over me, and sprinkled water on my head. Then, just as happy as can be, he held me up for the congregation to see...like Simba in the movie, The Lion King. And the people cheered...or at least they smiled and oohed and ahhed. Another right of passage in an otherwise pretty dull and regular church service. It's a tradition complete with relatives from out of town, the choosing of God-parents, and sometimes fun parties and receptions. But, if you read the words that we recite during this otherwise cutesy little ceremony, you might get a little scarred about what we are actually committing to here.

I mean when is the last time you "renounced the spiritual forces of wickedness" or "rejected the evil powers of this world" or "resisted evil, injustice and oppression in whatever form they present themselves?" It's almost comical how serious all of this sounds. I mean, I was a baby for goodness sakes, and my parents...I mean they weren't like superheroes going around resiting evil and spiritual forces of wickedness...were they? And us today. When we renew our vows, are we going to do that? Are we going to seriously leave this place today and go fight some kind of holy spiritual war? What does all this really mean to us...today and in our every day lives? What does baptism really mean...and how does it change us or affect who we are?

When I was in middle school I started to notice certain brands. First came the alligator... If you didn't wear a shirt, a jacket, or a shoe with an alligator on it, then you just weren't cool. You weren't hip, you didn't fit in. Next came the polo player on a horse...Polo. Same thing. If you didn't wear those or didn't have a closet full of those clothes, then you just weren't right. You didn't fit in. Not only that...but we want to look like those models on TV who are so happy, so rich, so together...all because they not only wear the Polo clothes...but they live the Polo lifestyle...whatever that is. They sail yachts...they ride horses...they drive expensive cars...they are good looking... We want that and we think that if we put on that shirt...we can put on the Polo life.

We wear Crimson and white or blue and orange so we can brand ourselves as an Alabama or an Auburn fan. We are a citizen of BAMA nation...we have BAMA values... We shout WAR Eagle to perfect strangers...and they shout it back to us. We fit in...we're a part of a community! We want to fit in to a larger group. We crave acceptance. We need to know who we are...we are Alabama Fans...we are Auburn Fans.

Our kids need the latest cell phone, ipod touch, or PDA so that they can show they are indeed smart, hip, and a trend setter. We think that if we have whatever is new, whatever is cool, whatever is stylish...we will be looked up to, we will fit in, we will be accepted by the people who do the accepting in this society. But in fact, we're all just trying desperately to fit in, to be loved, and to follow whoever or whatever is making the rules up about who is cool/worthy/respected.

And here we are today...Baptism Sunday...remembering a day when we put on a Spiritual identity. Sure its not polo or Izod or the latest fashion...it's a 2000 year old tradition of taking on the Spiritual mark...the Spiritual brand of our creator, our Lord, and our Saviour. We are saying that we take on His values, His culture, His world view. But we are also accepting that God is putting His mark on us. He is accepting us as His children. We no longer have to worry about fitting in to some group and adopting someone else's values...we are a part of God's family, God's Kingdom, and we can know who we are by remembering who He says we are.

And who are we according to God? Adopted sons and daughters, loved and accepted. We are loved enough for Him to pursue us...not when we get our lives straight, or fix ourselves up to look presentable. We are acceptable and loved just as we are today. For "while we were yet sinners...Christ died for us..."

New Life

2009-12-09T05:05:00.001-08:00

New Life/Following Christ/Sacrifice - they all point to something that only becomes real when we give ourselves away. The transformation of ourselves doesn't happen until we bring to the table something of ourselves that is both valuable, vulnerable, and tangible.

I can start with money, or I can start with something very personal within myself. I can start by giving some time that is valuable to me in some other way. It's not giving away the "free time" or the "extra money" or making a "hobby" out of some kind of charity. True transformation comes from sacrifice. But that one sacrifice is not the end, but the beginning to the path of relationship.

Because when we give away something of value to ourselves, we must depend upon God to replenish so that we may give again. Life in God's Kingdom is a life of giving and a life of giving away even more than is comfortable to give. At that point we find ourselves in need. That is a good place to be in, because in our need we find God's provision. The needy need God. God make me needy. Or rather, God let me see my need for You, and respond by giving away all that I have so that You can fill me up again. Like the shampoo bottle..."Wash, Rinse, Repeat".

True Confessions.

2009-11-18T05:21:00.000-08:00

From a post responding to a cartoon at http://www.nakedpastor.com/archives/4165

It just doesn't get more honest than this...tell me you've never felt this way...and mean it:

"The relationship with God that I attempted never felt very real. He never talked to me. I talked to him, but he was always silent. I had to just trust that he was really there and really listening.

I found what he said in the Bible very confusing and contradictory. It made me crazy trying to figure out which verses applied to which situations. Other people never seemed to have a problem with that. God never helped me to understand.

I finally gave up and decided this whole relationship was an imaginary thing inside my own head.

Aren’t there bare minimum standards for something to be considered a “relationship?”
What are those standards?

I also heard that in Islam, they are not trying to have a relationship with Allah. They revere him and submit, have certain duties, etc., but it’s not a warm and fuzzy thing like in Christianity. Hopefully I’m not misrepresenting anything here. I’m sure you see what I’m trying to get at.

Oh yeah, and would you want to have a relationship with someone you fear? Like they might throw you in hell if you’re not of the elect?

And God TELLS us to love him. Can you love someone just because they tell you to?

I don’t get it."

When God actually "comes through for you..."

2009-09-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

HA! It doesn't happen...or to say it correctly...God always comes through for us. Today I have reached what I think of as a "breakthrough." I have been given something that I really wanted. A piece of the puzzle has clicked into place. God Came Through for me... Or did He?

In reality, what I think of as God making something happen...that I had been anticipating...was actually just one more step in a plan of His making all along. Events and milestones that are big and celebratory to me, are most likely the culmination of many other un-noticed events and milestones that are recognizable only by a calculating and calling God. God doesn't just see what I see as victories. I think He sees each step that I take with Him...following Him...as a victory for His Kingdom. After all...what is the goal of life? Success? Accomplishing my dreams? Or praying and accepting that God's dreams BECOME my dreams...that God's successes or Kingdom successes become my idea of success.

God's ideas of good are much different from what I have learned from my culture, my family and my world. In God's upside-down world, the first are last, and the last are first. The persecuted are the blessed and the poor will be made rich. The happy will be made sad, and the sad will be comforted. I pray for my enemies and for those who persecute me. I love those who try to kill me and I turn my cheek to accept another blow. I become defenseless, because I need no defense. No power can hurt me, because I am transformed from earthly being to heavenly body. I am no longer my own, but my God's. I am no longer free to be as I see fit, but I am slave to a God whose slavery is so much better than my own idea of freedom. And yet in this state of slavery, I am more free than I have ever been.

In God, through Christ, through His liberating love and sacrifice, I gain all the lasting treasures of true love. I loose everything so that I can gain the one thing that matters. And once I have it, I give it all away, freely. And strangely enough, as long as I freely give...I always have more than I need.

from Sojourners...

2009-09-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

Dear bart,

While talk show hosts spread fear of reform, Americans are going broke from health-care costs.

Tell Bill O'Reilly to tell the truth about health-care reform.

It’s good that some of America’s most conservative talking heads are hearing from people of faith. On a recent episode of The O’Reilly Factor [1], Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby, did some truth-telling:

"I think what Jesus says over and over again, both in our lives and in the scriptures, is that it's our responsibility to make sure that the least are cared for. And that it is a societal responsibility. Therefore, we must as a nation make sure that everyone has access to health care."

Bill O’Reilly’s response, however, was out of touch and misleading:

“There are a number of ways to do that and I support the clinic way, whereby the federal government could have clinics in almost every county in the country that do provide services for the poor. However, if the government takes over health care ... and begins to tell people when they can live and when they can die, and the country goes bankrupt in the process ... more people will be harmed, including poor people.”

Be another voice of faith setting Bill O’Reilly straight about health-care reform.

Does Bill really think that the health-care crisis is only a problem for poor people? Or that clinics alone are a real solution? While his band-aid suggestions and scare tactics obscure the issue, the health-care crisis is making people poor as costs skyrocket - even for those with coverage.

Even those who may lose business as a result of reform know that, in the health-care crisis, it’s the current system that’s bankrupting America - one citizen at a time:

I'm a bankruptcy lawyer, so I'm in one of the two groups that will be hurt by real health-care reform (insurance companies being the other).
About a third of my clients are in bankruptcy due to medical bills (another third have some medical bills, but it's not what pushed them over the edge). Almost all of them thought their health insurance would cover the problems they had.
Many had gone to great lengths ahead of time to make sure their treatment would be covered, only to find out after the fact that their insurance company wouldn't pay. They've heard every excuse in the book (or in the fine print of the policy): experimental treatment, lifetime cap, high deductible, missed deadlines, lack of notification, pre-existing condition, and so on.
To me, the worst part of the American health-care financing system is that you can't tell what your treatment will cost.
I know folks who have flown to Pakistan to have operations they couldn't get in the U.S. because nobody in the U.S. (unlike Pakistan!) would agree in writing ahead of time what it would cost them. [2, emphasis added]

Tell Bill O’Reilly that all Americans - rich and poor, with and without insurance - need real reform now.

Bill doesn’t trust the government to provide his own health care, but he thinks it’s good enough to provide clinics for the poor. We need comprehensive reform for all Americans, not just band-aids for people in poverty.

No person in America should go bankrupt because they cannot afford needed medical care. The major proposals for health-care reform would prohibit insurance companies from placing an annual or lifetime limit to the amount of coverage a person can receive, and would limit the amount that can be charged in out-of-pocket deductibles.

No person should have to fight serious illness and bankruptcy at the same time. The issue is not, as O’Reilly says, the government going bankrupt - it is hundreds of thousands of Americans going bankrupt.

Bill O’Reilly has shown that he’s willing to listen to voices of faith when it comes to health-care reform. Add your voice to the chorus of those calling for truth-telling on this vital issue.

Click here to take action today.

Shalom,

Ryan, Elizabeth, Duane, and the team at Sojourners

----

1) The O'Reilly Factor, 8/19/2009

2) Source: "The View From Your Sickbed," a reader’s letter to "The Daily Dish," The Atlantic online, 8/10/2009

your soul

2009-09-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

"Your body is a manifestation of your soul."

small words/small thoughts

2009-09-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

lately I've been impressed with the power of words. how easily they can hurt. oh how easily they can be said. how hard it is to forget them or not take them personally. written words can hurt even more because they don't have the sounds that animate them. maybe they are even more dangerous, because the reader can add her own animation regardless of what was intended by the writer. that, my friend, is dangerous too. CAPTIALS ARE DANGEROUS, bold is too loud, THIS IS A DECLARATION OF WAR, this is a conspiring whisper, and none of these words are more than pixels on a screen...pulses of light like the ones God called into existence in the beginning.

with these words i love, i paint, i push and cajole. with these words, these very quiet words, i pray, i hate

with these words i change, i relate, i scream - notice me.

i write these words to remind me that they are more powerful than i intend. i shouldn't be trusted with words because they are too powerful...not yet. i need to practice more with actions until they look more like the words that i want to say and that i want to be.

There is no "or"

2009-09-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

Either God will come through, or... It is something that I say alot in my head. My therapist called this "self talk." If you've been there, you know what that means. If you've read Deepak or a disciple of his, you know what that means. It's the self-affirming or condemning stuff that we say and believe in our heads about our 'self.'

Either God will do it, or... It doesn't really make sense. God is who God is. He will do what He will do. He says He will take care of us and care for us...clothe us, feed us... Help my unbelief.

Power and Equality?

2009-08-24T11:20:00.001-07:00

"Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it. They will use whatever means are convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise. Nevertheless there are possibilities of increasing social justice through the development of mind and reason.”

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society

The more we think about ourselves and our relationship to one another, the more kind we must become. Does this sound irrational to you? Or is it only that you ascribe sinister motives to everyone else. Why not hope in the goodness that is in another human being. Why not even act as if you believe your neighbors motive is not simply greed and self gratification? His actions could be based upon the same confused morality that you and I try to apply to our lives in the most rich and hedonistic society on earth.

"Social Justice" is not just another anti-capitalist, anti-establishment, anti-American concept. In fact it is not necessarily anti-anything. In fact social justice at its core is based upon one very basic truth...that all men are created equal. AHA! So it is a very "American" concept...free market, capitalistic, and all that? Maybe this is where the paths in the woods start to diverge.

Equality of man is not license for come what may. It is not a definition that says...o.k. I'm equal to you and you to me...so you get what you get. I have no responsibility for you. Your failures are your own; your success is your own... You are equal to me, so if I exceed you in wealth, power, and status, that is your fault, not mine. If you are hungry, tired, naked, and abused, well that is yours to bear.

So, we have to consider, that even though my environment (my parents, my skin color, my religious persuasion, etc...) has favored my "success" in the measure of this society and economic system, my success creates even greater responsibility for me to bring equality to my world. Should I now reward the lazy, no good, useless minions that can't seem to work a five day week? Yes, and I should look deeper than the stereotypes and the casual studies to find the injustices that put a person in a down-trodden position. At the end of this search, I guarantee that I will find injustice.

While we all may be created equal, we have also created ways to make life very "un-equal" for some. We have also created many systems that make life in this society a whole lot easier for others.

Why are minorities the highest percentage of the prison population? Because they're born to be criminals? Why do land-locked countries have lower GDP and lower wages? Why does the African continent have higher instances of poverty than the rest of the world? Because these people are just stupid, corrupt, immoral? The entire race??? There is injustice in this world. Just because we are the haves, and others are the have-nots...doesn't mean we are right and blessed, and they are wrong and cursed.

Our material "blessing" is our curse because we have become numb to the things that really matter. The capital that we should be spending is our time. The investment vehicle with the greatest return is relationships...and not just with those like us, or who can get things for us. Relationships that are mutual, loving, and full of respect and hope are priceless. And, whether we like it or not, we are "in relationship" with everyone else in this world. What we do affects one another. The effect is magnified by the amount of time we spend with others. And time, is something we all have in equal supply. How we spend it can be dictated and controlled by our own actions and the actions of others.

Our effect and the effect of others upon us is inescapable. But, it can be beautiful, if we use it for the right purpose. Figuring out that purpose brings us back to the Niebuhr quote above. The mental exercise he prescribes has purpose...it can change the world, by changing you.

Life is going on...

2009-08-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

It is going on...It doesn't seem to start and stop based on prayer, answers to prayer, guidance from God or even bad things and good things that happen. It seems hard sometimes to deal with the fact of life moving forward as I seem to sit still.

The fact of the matter is that I feel called to do this work, to do ministry, and do it as a vocation, not just part of what I do in my job and life. I feel called to professionally support the church daily with my skills that I use to support the company I work for. There are details to be worked out. My friend and pastor, Jack says that nothing has ever gotten in the way of his ministry to others. In many ways, what could get in the way of God. In Romans, Paul says that not even death can thwart the plans God has for us... In Phillipeans we are reminded to trust in the Lord and not worry about anything. Jesus compared our lives to that of birds or lillies in the field...said that God clothed those and fed those creatures every day with what they need to fulfill their purpose, and are we not much more valuable than them? Are we?

At least to God, I think we are, so much so that no authority, and not even death can circumvent the plans God has for us.

An impossible predicament

2009-08-03T07:33:00.000-07:00

"The State of Israel needs to reconsider the future consequences of this process, which allows Jews to claim ownership of property that belonged to them before 1948, but prevents the same claims from being realized by Palestinian residents. A general opening of ownership cases - Jews and Palestinians - from before 1948 could place the State of Israel in an impossible predicament in Jerusalem."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1248277947829&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Hanging out and waiting for things to happen

2009-07-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes waiting for God can seem like "waiting for Godot" - you can google the reference. It seems like a sense of limbo and it can be distracting. Even if I am praying about what seems to be a life-changing decision for me...like a big change in occupation...that shouldn't become the focus of my life. It's easy to put the "idea" of following God, ahead of following God. What? Think about it. It's like worshiping the Bible, and not understanding the words lead you to worship the Creator. It's like worshiping a relic of the cross and not remembering the what the cross means to you as a Christian believer. In the same way...waiting for God can be an idol in itself.

I'm not saying God doesn't lead me to times of prayer, meditation, and reflection. But there are still hungry and hurting people in my path. And I don't get to say to them...wait...I need to see if I can help you...it may not be God's will for me right now. Ha...

On NPR there was a story of a man in Karachi, Pakistan...uneducated, untrained in anything. He started one of the biggest social service networks in the country. He has clinics for babies and buries the anonymous dead. It's an amazing story. He doesn't have to ask God what to do today...it's right in front of him every day.

So for me, let me not forget the relationship...with God, with my neighbor. Let me not forget my neighbor extends beyond my immediate vision, beyond my neighborhood, my social class, my race, and even my borders. My neighbor is the entire world. Open my eyes Lord, that I may see...Open my heart Lord, that I may respond...with your strength...not my own.

today's perscription for spiritual growth

2009-07-23T07:58:00.001-07:00

Read this:

http://bit.ly/cbkHz

Read this:

http://www.nakedpastor.com/archives/3566

That is all...

Welcoming Immigrants?

2009-07-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

We put up so many walls to immigrants in the US because we are so afraid that all this goodness that "God" has blessed us with might accidentally be diminished if we share it more freely. Mourn the day people...mourn the day.

On the other hand, Israel seems to be getting immigration right...at least when it comes to welcoming their own... Of course, if the US is a Christian nation...(I really don't believe that big one...) then shouldn't we be welcoming all persons with open arms?

So here's how Israel handles immigration...read it and weep... (maybe the Jews really are God's chosen people, and Christians have some how missed the boat when it comes to acting like Jesus):

From the Jerusalem Post :

To smooth the transition for a recent group of South African immigrants to Israel, the Jewish Agency has devised a new way of helping olim (immigrants). Instead of bringing olim to Israel, Israel was brought to the olim via an "aliya expo" in South Africa. "This is a new concept of aliya (immigration)," said Ofer Dahan, the Jewish Agency's outgoing representative for South Africa. "This way, anyone interested in aliya would be able to take out a mortgage, buy an apartment, make investment, do anything he wants to before he comes to Israel."

More than 100 South Africans made aliya on one recent day, and to ease the process, El Al airlines officials came to a local community center to check in the baggage early, which allowed olim to board their flight directly, resulting in reduced stress.

Post-aliya care has been stepped up, too. In a move to reduce bureaucracy, representatives of banks, national insurance, schools and the government met with the olim the next day in their hotel, thus saving these new immigrants many hours of going back and forth processing paperwork. It is hoped that this procedure will serve as a model for future group flights.

What do we really know...

2009-07-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been asked what you think of something? I mean, it's like you are really supposed to KNOW something and impart that knowledge to lead and influence people. What a bunch of bunk.

Do I really Know...capital "k" Know anything? I know what I think, I know what I like, although that can change in an instant. I know how I feel right this instant, although that will also change in a second. So what do I "K"now. Not much...not much at all. In fact the more that I learn, the more I learn that I do not Know much worth knowing.

There are a lot of things that I believe though. I believe that loving my neighbor is about the best I can do to show Christ's love to another human being. I believe that the principles that Jesus displayed on this earth are not necessarily what is happening in my life, or being promoted through many "Christian" religions. I believe that someone who is a very good Hindu may be a better Christian than I am. I believe that for me to become who God wants me to be, I must deny myself and what I want for the betterment of others. I believe that all of the above is very hard to do...

I believe that I love most people, but that I should love all people.

I believe that I need to live in community with you, not just live in your community.

I hope that my belief will match my action...

Love and Peace to all.

True Kingdom of God...Zemayesh

2009-07-07T05:16:00.001-07:00

From my friend Joyce Spielberger: This is truly community. It is what we need to be about as the capital "C" Church universal:

I recently returned from Israel where I had the privilege of attending our Partnership 2000 steering committee meetings in our sister city of Rosh Ha'ayin. The day before the meetings began, I was at a marina in Herzilya where I saw a boat with the name "Zemayesh" written on it. Loosely translated, Zemayesh means "this is what we have" or as we might say in America, "what it is, it is." And, of course, like an Israeli, you add a gesture and shrug your shoulders as you say "Zemayesh."

Zemayesh, this is what we have. I don't know why but the expression continued to resonate with me throughout my time in Israel...as I spoke to the Israeli people, as I looked out the window of our bus at the scenery and as I visited programs our Federation and Foundation support. Zemayesh.

I thought, Zemayesh, this is what we have in Israel...arid, barren desert; yet, Israelis have learned to grow crops, creating revolutionary techniques to irrigate by bringing desalinated water all the way from Ashkelon to grow vineyards, crops such as cherry tomatoes, and Eucalyptus trees in the Negev.

Zemayesh, this is what we have in Israel...the most hospitable people, who love for you to drop in unannounced and visit with them, any time of the day. Zemayesh...amazing, resilient people who want nothing but for their children and their children's children to grow up in an Israel that is safe and secure, a place where they can live in peace. Zemayesh, this is what we have.

Our Federation understands Zemayesh. We raise dollars each year and Zemayesh, this is what we have. However, for us, too, it is not only Zemayesh, it is also "Zeh She'mah Osim" -- "this is what we do."

Zeh She'mah Osim...so we can be sure that nowhere in the world a Jewish person goes in need. Zeh She'mah Osim...so that children and communities in Southern Israel have the physical and emotional support they need as they live in fear of rocket attacks. Zeh She'mah Osim...so that we can help each of our local agencies contribute and enrich our Jewish and broader communities. Zeh She'mah Osim...so that we can build vital, collaborative partnerships with the broader community to benefit Birmingham as a whole.

Yes...Zemayesh...the dollars you contribute...this is what we have; and yet Zeh She'mah Osim...this is what we can do together, through our Federation and Foundation. There is so much we do, continue to do, and will do, thanks to your support. Todah rabbah! Thank you very much.

Wiping out Israel?

2009-07-06T05:32:00.000-07:00

Israel's ambassador to the US, warned on Friday that an Iranian atomic bomb could "wipe Israel off the map in a matter of seconds."

Geographically, we are very far removed from the middle east conflicts... It's not just the Israeli's that are afraid...it's the Sunni Muslims too. It's too easy to just write off the constant messages out of Israel as "paranoid" or "posturing." It's way more than that...it's a matter of survival.

If someone had a gun pointed at our head, constantly...we might understand how they feel. In this instance, the gun isn't quite constructed yet. It's being built, one piece at a time. Agonizingly, the Israelis are watching its construction and wondering why we can't all come up with a solution to prevent it's completion. Because, once it's complete, it's too late. The trigger can be pulled in seconds.

Then, they would be forced to do something for their own survival.

I don't care

2009-07-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

If you care about something you really have to start speaking up about it. It doesn't matter what it is. If you don't, I don't think you really care.

You're probably not going to get shot or beaten or even kicked out of the country club for speaking up...but someone may not eat, may get deported, or may not get medical care if you don't. I'm not saying it's all up to you by yourself. But if you don't start, you will never be the catalyst in the chain of events that makes the whole thing go.

If you think your insignificant...just wait until you try to make a difference. You'll find just how significant your opposition thinks you are...

love

2009-07-01T11:34:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the simplest things bring the most joy. I built a fort out of pillows and blankets with my son. It was the best thing I did all day.

When nothing is enough...

2009-06-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm really wrestling with something. Sometimes life can just seem a bit too much. You have faith in God to lead you. You have a spiritual life that informs you, inspires you, guides you. But there are still times when nothing you do seems to bring you peace...or helps you to believe "enough."

What is enough faith? What is enough belief? I feel like the guy who approached Christ saying..."I believe, help my unbelief." It's like I'm saying...I believe, but I just can't get it all together. God, please help me when I can't muster the faith to even ask for help.

What I have is a gift from God, even though I like to think it somehow came from me, or started from me. It didn't. Even what little I have, was a gift, freely given in love. The more I try to assert my own strength, my own belief, my own faith, the more I move away from depending upon and believing in God. It almost sounds silly as I write it. So simple, so hard to believe. The foolishness of our faith confounds the wisdom of this world and all of its messages.

Let my weakness showcase God's strength. Instead of fighting my way forward, let me submit myself to God's will. I want to find the still small voice leading opposite the tide. It takes doing nothing sometimes to stop and hear that voice.

Going to sleep

2009-06-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

I was asleep. In my life, in many ways I was going through the motions being caught up in one thing after another. The stress of the moment could change my focus, alter my emotions, start my mind on a track that was hard to stop. I could be distracted from what was right in front of me, because I was only thinking about something else... Normal.

We're usually asleep like that. We stop hearing the birds sing when we're outside, we don't even notice our ride into work. What did the trees look like? How did the sun fell as it fell upon your face. How did the air conditioning feel as it cooled you? Did that song on the radio make your soul dance or cry? Do you remember what you just said to your friend on the cell phone?

It's like we're just filling time between things that we don't experience. Experiences that aren't experienced. In a way, we are asleep. What puts our lights out? What makes the day seem like a haze or a series of obstacles just to jump through? We're zoned out. We need to tune in.

We need to think one thought at a time and do one thing at a time. We need to pay attention to what is in front of us. IF we don't like what we see, we need to get up and move. We need to wake up our minds and decide what gets our attention and our focus and our very short time on this earth. If what is filling our lives is junk...then our lives are junk. If what is filling our lives is rich and lasting and enriching and sustaining...then our lives are rich and fulfilled. If we don't know WHY we are doing what we are doing, then we are asleep and unaware. We have to wake up. WAAAAKE UUUUUUUUP! What fills you up?

Are Latinos the new Jews?

2009-06-18T04:47:00.000-07:00

I am distressed. Two latinos in Arizona are murdered by members of a "minuteman" anti-immigration group. It's sad. A line has been crossed. One of the suspects is believed to have murdered a latino homeless person years ago as well.

The Anti-Defamation League now reports that Sotomayor is being blamed on the "Jews:" "White supremacists and anti-Semites have flooded Internet sites with messages charging the Sotomayor nomination is the result of 'Jewish power.'" The best thing about this is that Jewish advocacy groups are embracing the Latino community out of a common bond: persecution by the ultra right hate groups.

Today in Alabama, troopers can stop you on "suspicion" of being an undocumented immigrant. They can take you to jail and start deportation proceedings if you can't produce ID fast enough. Better not look Latino down here! Better not be listening to Mexican radio!

In Albertville, Alabama, the mayor is diverting money from the school system to try to start an immigration detention program in his city. TWENTY FIVE PERCENT of his constituency is Latino. They have started businesses, bought houses, and made his formerly abandoned downtown into a bustling business district. Thanks so much...now go back to Mexico?

It's a sad day in America when the new "weapon" against "illegal immigration" is a gun in the hands of vigilantes. Enough is enough. Violence is the product of hate...it can only be combated by all of our communities standing together against it. Christians, Jews, Muslims...all peace loving and God-fearing persons...we need to stand together for the common beliefs of decency and human rights against this tide.