as if it were motioning "no"

My Life by Joe Wenderoth

Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since then I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.

chimes

Unrelenting Flood by William Matthews

Black key. White key. No,
that's wrong. It's all tactile;
it's not the information
of each struck key we love,
but how the mind and leavened
heart travel by information.
Think how blind and near-
blind pianists range along
their keyboards by clambering
over notes a sighted man
would notice to leave out,
by stringing it all on one
longing, the way bee-fingered
blind, mountainous Art
Tatum did, the way we like
joy to arrive: in such
unrelenting flood the only
way we can describe it
is by music or another
beautiful abstraction,
like the ray of sunlight
in a child's drawing
running straight to a pig's ear,
tethering us all to our star.

light

vision for this blog

in many ways i am still trying to find the right tone and subject matter for this blog. i know that i could stop writing about my experiences and opinions and instead post links to conversations that are happening about the emergent church and all things "postmodern". maybe sometimes i will still do that... but i think there are plenty of blogs that do this way better than i ever could.

what i would like to do with this blog is tell small stories about how i have caught glimpses of (what i perceive to be) God in my life. i haven't ever really tried to write anything like this before, so i am kind of nervous. and when i try to tell these stories, i really want God to be the focus of them, not me.

maybe some people will think that by starting out from that perspective (of having God be the focus) i cannot be objective about my experiences. the thing is, i am not trying to be objective, no one can be. we all start out from some perspective anyway.

so, thats the plan.

i am not sure if i can even talk about some things, if i am even at the place where i can write about things yet. i don't know how to write or talk about God in a way that is real enough, genuine enough. but i figure if i don't at least try that i won't ever learn how to talk about God in my life--so i might as well try.

good day

i had a really good day today at church. it was really mellow. maybe its just because i have been getting to know more people at the church through my volunteer work, or maybe its just because i got up at 5am, but i just felt so much more relaxed.

i ran into my friend who also goes to that church, but to a different service. she is my only christian friend within a 140+ mile radius and it was very good to see her!

anyway i just thought i would write about what a pleasant experience i had today because i realize much of my time on this blog is spent going on about all the not-so-nice things related to the church as an institution and christianity in general!

the most comical/ funniest part of today to me was probably when some lady that i do not know followed my friend and i around taking our picture for a solid five minutes. it sort of made me feel like an "exhibit" (((maybe part of the church's "youth" exhibit???)))) but in a funny good way

disciple-making the what!

sometimes lately i find myself tempted to pause at whatever unexpected juncture i find myself approaching and sometimes casually, sometimes seriously, wonder just what the hell i am doing. as i become more acquainted with the current events and language of the emergent church, sometimes i feel like i am being scammed through a back door straight into the evangelical community. does anyone else in the blogosphere have an opinion about "emergent" strategies being utilized as "evangelical tactics" in mainstream churches? Is that already happening? I don't know, I haven't scanned that particular book shelf in Borders long enough to know.

i'm still just not sure how i feel about pushing Jesus on other people, especially pushing Jesus on people in some clandestine way and also just general talk about what Jesus needs to do whatever on and on... my blood pressure rises everytime someone starts talking in churchspeak (the opposite of tongues) about what Jesus wants etcetera.

so there are three branches of "emergents": the relevant, the reformed and the revisionists. I guess I would fall into the category that crazy Mark Driscoll suggests are heretics, except that i am actually possibly a heretic. Also I think I may be going to a church that wants to eventually draw in people using "relevant" type worship strategies. (If all this lingo is driving you crazy, that's a good sign you are still normal!)

How is all this categorizing and evangelizing any different than the traditional church? I was talking last night to someone about watching the emergent church folks bicker online in various blogs and how thats really not any different than passive aggressive cat-fights at church meetings. I guess at least when you are bitching on your blog you can eat toffee nuts liberally at the same time! (At least I do!)

Blah/Maybe its the weather! here's a good site that always helps me counter the gloom

miscellaneous uneditted thoughts

anyone reading this blog may have noticed that i am heavy handed when it comes to editing. reviewing my saved drafts from last week, i realize that i posted and then removed 2 entries and severely edited one of them down to contain only a "happy thought"! this edited, sanitized version of my ideas on spirituality is a far cry from my honest experience: my spiritual experience is not neat, usually does not make much sense, and is rarely cheery. i openly feel that it would not hold up to rational scrutiny, intellectual questioning, nor do i feel that i could do a very good job of communicating tangible reasons for why i believe what i believe.

lately though i have been experiencing more joy about spiritual things in my personal life, but that still does not change the questions i have about many things: suffering, the global class structure or the absence of God or the seeming absence of the mercy of God in these areas. i still don't know how to reconcile my faith the with existence of terrible suffering. Why doesn't God intervene? Where is God? Are we supposed to sort of fill God's role since God is not around? I don't really get it.

i like Benjamin's post that quoted a SPU professor talking about switching back and forth between calvinist and armenian views; on externalizing good things and internalizing bad things:

Jennifer, who is a sociology prof at SPU, and whose ideas I've found provocative in the past, said something interesting. She said that we want to be able to switchcalvinism and armenianism. Which is to say, we want all the autonomy and control which the armenian view gives us, but then when something really bad happens, all of a sudden we're all calvinistic and want to blame god for it. she gave as an example that her students will say things like "Well, God put me into this horrible marriage with this awful man". And she asks questions along the lines of--well, why are you all of a sudden so calvinistic about it? rapidly back and forth between

One thing I thing I have been thinking about lately, is how some of us can be the good in the world, and if we are Christians how we can be Christ in the world, how we can counter all the suffering and terribleness ourselves. Not in an arrogant "i have the truth" evangelistic sort of way, but in a normal, real way. I don't know if that makes sense or not. Actually let me deconstruct "be Christ in the world". What does that mean, anyway?

What I mean is helping people not from a place of feeling superior or from a place of feeling like we need to be "charitable", but being a positive force simply because it is the right thing to do. I know many times it is hard to know what "the right thing" to do is, and many times there isn't one "right thing"-- but whatever we do, we can be kind, loving, warm, good, and a counteracting agent against the pain and suffering in the world. Obviously people don't need to be Christians to do this. The last few weeks I have just been acutely aware of how I personally am still screwed up, unhealed, jaded, cynical, etcetera, and basically just a case, but what a miracle, God can still use me to help, comfort and be a support to others. At least that is what i currently choose to believe or perceive or interpret to be happening

That said I also want to reiterate my problem with having a comfortable bourgeois type faith where belief in God is easier for me now that I am personally suffering less and live in the Eden-like pacific northwest surrounded by rain forest and the lingering promise of forever being, at very least, middle class.

lucky

the volunteer work i do gives me so much that i struggle to give as much as i get from it, and well, its just impossible. i love the people i work with and i am loved back by them and i am so thankful for that. i am so grateful for that.

here's a happy thought: this afternoon i walked down by the water and sat down listening to music. i sat very still and watched as four or five dozen ducks waddled right up to me and ate things out of the grass. they were so beautiful. i was listening to this jazz type music and the ducks seemed to be jiving, dancing right along, peck peck pecking. it was so wonderful. just to see them was to experience mercy.

interesting conversation

richard at experimental theology asks what Bonhoeffer meant by "religionless Christianity".

also, just in case posting to this link makes me sound like i am "familiar" with Bonhoeffer or something, i want to admit just finding out about him a few days ago. same thing with my link to hauerwas who i also just began reading. anyway im about halfway through The Cost of Discipleship--- talk about a change in perspective.

holy holy holy

until all was silent on the inside

after eleven years in the darkness we were all with him as blind
hands reaching out, fingers crossed
starving to find the light inside of each other--

and when the whale moved
the way whales move
(over, under, through) within
the cold blue, rushing through the wet, we moved too

with the whale in perpetual half-immersion
emboldened by our own self-propelled
motion through water.

he moved through the mist
we moved through the water and spoke the language of mist;
hallelujah

october 2007

ideas

#1

A few days ago, something neat happened. Well, a lot of neat things have been happening. But I wanted to write about this one really neat thing.

i had a day the other day, just one day, the first day I can remember having in my adult life, that was absolutely.... perfect. Well sure, you may be thinking, what is "perfect", right? What i mean is....

i had one whole day where i know I did not hurt anyone, i know didn't say or think anything mean to or about anyone or to myself (at least that I could/can remember) and i spent the whole day filled with peace, love, thankfulness, compassion in complete conscious service to God and it was wonderful!

#2

at emerging grace there is an interesting post about spiritual maturity that deals with the unfortunate (?) distinction between "volunteers" involved in mission work and people being trained to lead and function within the church system (ie professional ministry):

The structure of church has become like a noose in the discipleship process. Rather than discipling and training for mission, it seems that the majority of training is for "ministry" which has come to mean service within the church system....

hmmm:

Unless the institutions of church divorce themselves from raising up volunteers for their programs and creating structures of importance and inclusion based upon participation in those programs, we will not see real maturity or discipleship.

?thoughts? i sort of wonder who these people are that the blogger is talking about. i guess that was visible when i left the church around 2000ish. i guess i am not involved enough in churchlife and churchstuff to know, perhaps thankfully, if this is going on around my current neck of the woods. frankly i am not sure i want to know. the church i go to seems to value volunteers. they just had some gigantic volunteer bonanza; they also were able to come up with 50+ volunteers to help the homeless.

conversely my kidchurch (as wonderful as it was with some things) seemed to sort of groom people "into the ministry". maybe that was just my experience though. maybe i was just being "groomed". i guess i had a difference experience than most people.

looking back, i really did feel a lot of pressure to go to bible college and to eventually go into the ministry, even though i didn't want to. this in turn was framed as "running from God". even after i dropped out of high school, i ended up going for a year to a christian college, because i thought it was "the right thing to do".

#3

radiohead is done with their new album :) ---opps-- that wasn't what i was going to say.
i was going to say something... something more importantseeming. something serious. well maybe tomorrow.

this is how I speak in tongues

I no longer know if this cyclic motion
that escapes itself and moves outward
after intersecting FLOWER constitutes
a graph. Unsettled concrete unwinds
so long as it is pliable and I becoming
personally am likewise lesson ontological.
Uprise me with your sanctioning.
Near the signs there are yet paths
uneyed not blind but nonetheless.

Mist you are the epitome of Michael Burkard.
I legged until my toes were plagarized.
But this isn't about me. This isn't about my own
betterment at theft. I wanted to steal
like a master and subordinate appropriately.
You fed me regularly. Relativity like constant
MUSIC mist. The metaphors are many.
Forest is the thick.

It was up and down and turned into itself.
It faced itself into a map and took lifetimes.
I still cannot find the nose yet closer, closer is the ground.

October, 2005