Keep Imagining

For those of you who are not fortunate to read Herr Blumhardt's daily offering I submit this:

I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Ezekiel 11:19-20

As the heart is, so is the person. The heart is the soil from which divine plants grow; it is the source of all the power that is needed for their growth. That is why the seed of God’s word must first be planted in the heart. For the same reason a mere outward conformity to the law on the basis of fear is worthless. If it doesn’t stem from the heart it is hypocrisy; it is pharisaic.

The heart must be tender, kind, and good. We must be warmhearted if we are to please God. Therefore, look to your heart. Whoever understands God’s will in his heart and is sensitive to it, will carry it out. Put effort into it—stir up this feeling you have in your heart for God, so that it lights up your whole being and turns you into a fulfilled and genuine person of God!

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, from Family Prayers for Each Day.

If it doesn’t stem from the heart it is hypocrisy; it is pharisaic. - I love that. It's all about the heart and the heart is all about actions and choices. It is there that we learn what we really believe. Don't be like the "too many" that are content to say "We believe!" but live it in a measly way.

Go help the heartless dispassionate one's! Those who are more intent on comfort and confirmity. Busy about the business of smoothing the way and points of order - making everyone alike - removing contention the heart of a thing and calling it unity. Making everything a choking beige and extinguishing the fires of fervor.

We are the church of God! Those for whom passion won eternity! Those who despite the bleak darkness that swirls around them can drip with joy!

God help us for loving our safety and predictable cloying comforts, too afraid of our own shadows to step up to the position we own in Christ. This cancerous ease that turns us into meager and exiguous shades of what Christ Himself died for us to become.

"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.....Man - that great and wonderful living creature, more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures! For him the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist. God attached so much importance to his salvation that he did not spare his own Son for the sake of man..." (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p6.htm)

May God grant that we all look to our hearts and stir them to live in grace, gusto and the marrow of our faith - leaving off comfort more quickly and risking more of what we only suppose we own for that which we truly do!

You are Snoopy and you are MAGNIFICENT!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I've been getting back to a better pattern of self care and with that resuming my reading schedule. I've synthesized some stuff from my own thoughts and the heavy influence that "The Artist's Way @ Work" (W@W for short) has been on me.

I've been wrestling with the notion of presence - being present. We often talk about people who have presence - we admire that much self possession. Eleanor Roosevelt said "No one makes you feel inferior without your permission." A smart lady, with presence.

Anyway, for those of us on the journey inward to heaven, those who are trying by grace to know how we are, and to accept that despite it's truth - we are loved by God, saved and will be saved by God - being present is really important. Living in the liminal places demands it. I often suck at it.

The antithesis of being present is presenting. "Presentation" is that state that insists on controlling the information flow. It says to others "This is who I am - no really." While it means is: "Listen Bud - this is what you’re getting."

The presentation mentality offers us a lot of control and gives the appearance of having it together - of being acceptable and just as good (or even better) than the rest of our world. In church it allows us to say "I'm fine." when someone asks even when we are not. It's why we wear neckties in August or yell at our families through clenched teeth blinded by anger over something in the parking lot - then go into worship with others as if nothing is wrong whatsoever. It's the reason one of my teenagers in sunday school confided "My parents aren't as perfect as they want everyone around here to believe."

There's only one problem. Presenting doesn't work. It only promotes "fraud complex."

Fraud complex is that fear drenched state of worry over being exposed for who you really are.

"Presenting" means that I must vigilantly and constantly manipulate other's perceptions of me to protect the false self I choose to portray. It's like the actor that insists on being photographed from their "good side" trying to make sure everyone sees only what they want seen.

The presenter becomes exhausted by this process of fronting. Being with others becomes draining instead of revitalizing or comforting - you can't relax when you walk this road. It becomes preferable to keep just about everyone at arms length, or farther. Slowly it turns the presenter into an isolated shadow. Even finding pleasure in accomplishments becomes limited. Any joy they might derive from a success eventually becomes a fleeting respite from the possibility of being found out - of being exposed as a fake.

I want to live differently than that - in a community of people who are open to the possibility that we are all faking it at least some of the time, and that Jesus loves us anyway.

This made me laugh!

Careful! I'm deadly accurate with this rifle!  I'm a pro marksman!  You get inside of 5 yards - an you're mine!!

When you can't reach the standard ---- just lower the expectations!

Found this in some books we were packing up. This is what some people are calling an offering envelope for  "church."
Is it any wonder people are tired of how church is sometimes? We need a new word or one that can be redefined to capture a better metaphor.  Faith Community" is awkward - Ecclesia too Ancient Greek.  Any ideas?

I am taking a moment to consider the nature of this thing I wrestle with called ADD. If you have read my posts you get pretty quickly that the ADD thing is full blown and makes following my train of thought hard.

That's not because my thoughts are so much obscure or oblique as they are random. But what you are experiencing as a reader - I live - day in and day out. I wonder about what other people's prayer lives must be like compared to mine? I have half a dozen thought options I could follow at any given time  - I struggle to follow a single track to it's predictable end. (Note that I intentionally did NOT say logical end. That might infer that those of us alternate thinkers were beyond the scope of logic and that is hardly the case. )

It's just that for me, a line of thinking can go so many ways at each turn of a phrase at each moment in that train of thought I don't see next - I see options. An old friend said that my mind works like a roladex. Someone mentions an idea and I immediately start to reference any stories i know and the like to that idea. It's a wonderful gift to have in many ways - I see stuff that others don't see, hear things that others don't hear - all because of this "wiring."

Like yesterday - I'm waiting for Heidi to finish her purchase at the make up counter. I look down and see proudly displayed "Invisible line remover cream." I drew this anomaly to the attention of a staff member. She looked at the product and told me it was great stuff. I asked if she wanted the keys to the invisible Hummer I'd left parked outside. She made a face that made me think I hurt her brain.

But as much as this side of it is wonderful - there are other sides that aren't. Like the side that left you wondering why I brought up wondering about other people's prayers and then said nothing more about it.   The reason was not some clever way to try and help you "get" what it's like to have ADD - the reason is that in my mind ideas are left to float and dangle as they may.  It just didn't rematerialize in the ether of the conversation.  I still have lots of thoughts about it but it didn't make the "final edit" called speech.

I am just figuring out what it is to contend with ADD after living with it for four decades. It's like discovering you have an amiable troll living in the space under your stairs at home. A bit unnerving to be sure, but once you realize he his harmless enough, and  that getting rid of him would mean losing a lot of other really great things - things  you really like, you begin to think about coming to terms with the brute.

In the end I'll only guess what the prayers of others are like. Mine will always be like the twitchy one in your family that hogs the remote and watches several programs at once. I am just asking God right now to help me move from the place where my faith is about what it does for me. I want to love God for His sake - and from that place alone find how to love myself in Him.
ernard - a friend of Jesus' who maybe loved his mom a bit too much.

---

Wow what a trip!

I can't even remember when we left! Anyway that's all well and good. I had some really great experiences while we were away some just surreal. Like the calendars at the bowling alley in Cobelskill NY that read "Jesus still hears and answers prayer John and Lynn Woodward."

I think the intent was that the wonderful verses that were superimposed on the obligatory "Anglo Jesus" Art were meant to inspire the users of the calendar with the Words of Life. (Not be a public reminder to the Woodward's that they should talk to God more.) But when I saw it- I laughed. (Remind me to tell you about how the service industry is doing in the Cobelskill not so Super 8 Motel)

Another bizarre moment was when I found the "church" scented incense. (I am not kidding -just look at the picture) Somebody decided that the church has it's own distinct scent (no pun intended) and decided to formally capture it in a smoldering stick kind of way.

The picture

It's taken in low light with my little Vivicrap camera but it's there.