Keep Imagining

Was out and about and saw this weirdness.

God Machine?  What does it do?  If you get three "gods" is that a good thing or does it smite you - or do you get to tell it who to smite?

The possibilities are mind boggling!


Keith

Read this:
The newest dangerous trend among teenagers

Made this:

I read this today on Blumhardt's website:


Becoming truer is really hard.  I find that I am all too good at fooling myself, convincing my ego of one fantasy or another.  Magical thinking (the idea that because I believe everthing will be "OK" it actually will.) seems to predominate in certain areas.  Getting comfortable in who I really am and how far away it is from who I want to to be - profoundly hard.  The more I get to know myself - the less I like what I see in some parts.

It's not the start of a depression, it's the answer to a prayer.  I really want to know the truth about me.  How I am perceived, what I am like - without all of my contrivances, masks and make-up.  Ugly or no, I want to have the clear truth - to "become truer."  How else can I move forward in a flexing flux filled world?

Shakespeare said "to thine own-self be true."  What a jerk.

So today marks the eighteenth year we have spent as husband and wife.  There are not words for being together like that.  I am convinced of her beauty.  The fleeting days of our youth have given way to something more deep and more rich.

Many would have you believe that those kinds of words are spoken by people who are not young anymore.  Like we have to cling to them despite our hidden feelings that they are not true.  But my wife really is beautiful - inside and out.  My appreciation for what she has become is not a consolation prize for youth.  She wholly is beautiful inside and out.  And with a richness of self that is unattainable in only 20 or so spins around the sun.

I can't find the location, but in New York there's a brass monkey fitted to the end of a handrail.  It was added as an architectural flourish.  It gleams today bright and shining because people go out of their way to touch it - to connect with it.  Despite the ravages of the weather and pollution it shines brighter now than when it was first installed. My wife is like that shining brass. (Not at all like the monkey - unless she’s feeling playful)

My Heidi shines - she gleams, burns bright, lights my fire.  I am in the midst of a lot of uncertainly right now but I am certain of her, of who she is and is becoming, that she loves me and that I so love her.  And that makes all the other stuff so much easier to bear.

I was reading Matthew's account of the woman who took a risk of faith.  You probably know her as "the woman with the issue of blood."  I've chosen to define her by her success and trust in God not the sores that lead her to Him. (It's like the accounts from Louisianna, where the whites were "scavenging" while the blacks were "looting")  And the church has a history of misogeny we need to chuck too so - She's the woman who took a risk of faith.

But she just touches Jesus ever so lightly, just brushes his coat, and is elementally changed. the sores heal.  But i wondered if she'll ever loose the scars that the undoubted shunning from the culture of that day left on her heart?  She was made well physically but had to work out the aftermath of "who she was" from the place of who she'd become.  Her "sores" had healed but there still would be scars.

 I was struck that there is a difference in the healing process - a differentiation between the scars and the sores.  Soon after any accident (or an "on purpose" for that matter) whichever way the violence or injury enters your life, there begins the recovery from it.  Perhaps it's an unkind or thoughtless word, maybe it's the hammer that crushed your finger, maybe people you thought were your friends prove themselves to be otherwise, maybe you were born hemophilic.

In any case there is impact, and from that impact a process of recovery.  Sometimes it is hard to determine which of our injuries are sores and which are scars.  Some of us get wounded so often in the same place, that what was easliy only a sore - becomes a scar.

Jesus gives us as much of himself as we care to ask for He draws as close as we will tolerate.  It is in that place that the sores heal and He teaches us the true nature of scarred selves.  He teaches us we are poor in spirit, marred and crippled. And it is only in Him that we have our strength.

So here's to risks of faith and scars and sores - may He heal you.

I wanted to post about this yesterday bet the day got away from me.  I was sitting in the unfavorable situation of dropping our kids off at the church I just "resigned" from.  It was a kind of thing one has to prepare emotionally to accomplish.

I was flat unable to walk into the building - so as my wife took our kids to check in I sat in the car and listen to the ipod.  Sting had managed to work his way to the top and sang two ballads (Fields of gold and How fragile we are) then this whining starts - a singer I can't place whining so badly I think it's one of those old Ray stevens tunes - just a gaff.

But it isn't.  This is what I heard:





So now I'm crying trying to remain motionless so as to not attract any attention and avoid a hard conversation.  It was hard.  But I thank God I'm not stuck in reverse.  Actually the hardest part of all of this right know is knowing that a needy church lost a great Youth Pastor.  However, "God's next" gained in the deal – what happens remains to be seen.

I reading a wonderful book.  The Artist's Way at Work : Riding the Dragon, It's been a tremendous help to me through this process.  I've been reflecting on the use of creativity in the church moderne.  Or more correctly the absence of it.

I realized that the nature of conventionality is uniformity.  Something i will never be able to "get" much less live.  I guess the safety that is gained from the sameness permits a kind of comfort.  In a world of ever increasing flux - this uniformity appears helpful to "conventionals."  The "beige -ification" even can be sold as unity.  Blancmange uniformity isn't unity!  (The french dish called "blancmange"  its a gelatinous dessert of milk and cornflour.  They used to use it to help nurse the very sick back to health (like hospital jello) - flat flavorless and you'd have to be really sick to eat it willingly.)

But then I took a walk to the park with my kids - and we discovered that the chestnut tree on the way to the park was shedding it's fruit.  A rich fall bounty fit for any child's tresure box.

Despite their similarity - each nut was unique.  Some part of a trio in a pod, others an only child.  There is no telling their fate by their look.  Some may end up as squirrel bait, others the parent of my grandchildren's chestnut oddysseys.

But it was the group of them that was beautiful.  Each nut on it's own had a kind of beauty - but a bouquet?  Breathtaking.  Some had "hatched," some were trying, others still were pried into the daylight by the swift fingers and determination of my kids.  We brough a scad of them home - hands and pockets full. A proud prize to show their mother.

I immediately arranged them in a wicker basket.  I wanted to see these for a bit.  Wholly un uniform, an unconventional hodgepodge of sticks and pods and nuts - yet entirely beautiful.

Any church that fails to get that "Hell is beige."  Will probably put the matter to rest by vote at the next business meeting.  After all - what's uni-conformity for?

I read from Ryan's blog:


I was encouraged to see these words.  I've been bothered (along with many others) for years at the idea of a world divided so neatly as "secular and sacred."  The notion that something like music could be "Christian" is ludicrous - but we have whole industries making tidy piles of cash predicated on such nonsense.  Since things cannot have any ideology - only people and organizations of people, have ideologies, Ryan's point here is a good one.

I'd like to point out that the differentiation between the "secular" and the sacred has to do with people.  According to Wikipedia "sacred" simply means "Dedicated to, or set apart for,... worship."  So what is "sacred" is limited only by what can be set aside or apart for worship.  In turn then, sacred has more to do with who is doing the setting, the parting, and the worshiping than anything else.  A hot dog to someone who hasn't eaten for a long time can be sacred, while the person sitting next to them at the store counter resents that they have to settle for fast food instead of a "proper" meal.  One set it aside for worship the other did not.

To see the sacred in things you have to look at the context the individual brings to the setting or thing.  An ancient principle is at work in this: In order to see - one must look.

Love much, pray more,

K

Fred at Abductive has posted some notes about the Nexchurch Conference at Kentucky Christian University.


I think I can get right behind a lot of what Len Sweet says,  the "church moderne" is so addicted to the process! May God grant that the age of the driven church is over!  I am so sick of the emptiness.  This Jabez quoting, semi-present, plastic unenthusiastic they sell as spirituality is superficial and disconnected at best, and a Jesus based theme mall at worst..

They have no notion how to get where they want to be, so like two ticks with no dog - they just suckle each other on the latest marketing scheme to make Jesus sellable.  Pastors are not ministers they are CEO's or department heads - middle managers ...

I'll stop - the rant would be too long otherwise.

Just ask yourself - when you next meet a professional cleric.  "Did I just meet person who is about being and living holy, or someone just trying to sell me on the idea?"

The Christ followers with the greatest clarity want to know how to own who they were created to be - "as is." (NOT listen to the next sermon on the "seven easy steps to never fail spirituality."  The of clowns who write that crap would do well just to meet that person God created them to be.)

But people who want to be like Jesus start with the hard work of meeting their true selves - shortly after they meet Him.  How can anyone get from one place to another without knowing their starting point?  A map is only useful if you know where you are in relation to your destination.

But relentless self knowledge has been mostly abandoned by the church moderne.  They seem to aspire to reconcile the Kingdom with their dreams of Corporate American success.  Just look at the cover notes of the books they write for each other.

But most people quietly fear our extended (or immediate) family may end up as an episode of Maury or COPS. We are collectively screwed up!  What if I'm not upwardly mobile (or trying to be) is there room enough for me in the pew without being checked off as someone's outreach trophy?

The only thing these driven churches ultimately end up with is a desire to escape the "quiet desperation" it offers as spiritual life by "planning the work and working the plan."  Doing takes over for being.  They all swim in a little row - like Dory says in Nemo "Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming"  -with only the vaguest notion of where they are headed.  "If we're swimming we must be getting there! We have all of these programs - we HAVE to be spiritual!"

Remember that the goats thought they were doing it all for God just before they got kicked to the infernal curb.

love much, pray more,
K