home sweet home

its good to be back

offensiveness and the gospel

Jeremy has been arguing that the gospel itself is not offensive, we are. In his second post on this subject, The Unoffensive Gospel of Jesus, he further expands on what he believes the gospel is and is not, along with introducing why the gospel itself shouldn't offend anyone:

"The gospel is not simply that Humans sin or are sinners and need a savior. The gospel is not simply social liberation. The gospel is not simply that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of Humans. The gospel is not simply the destruction of injustice. The gospel is not simply about being saved from hell and salvation unto relationship with God or heaven. All of these things reflect aspects of the good news of Jesus, but neither of them (by themselves) are the fullness of the good news of Jesus. Rather, the fullness of the good news that Jesus articulated throughout His ministry and life is the Kingdom of Heaven, an idea that should not be offensive, and communicated properly is unoffensive."

A lot of times reading novus lumen is like attending seminary for free and without the homework! Isn't the internet great?!

Words and the Diminution of All Things by Charles Wright

The brief secrets are still here,

                            and the light has come back.

The word remember touches my hand,

But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel

Against the occluded sky.

All of the little names sink down,

                           weighted with what is invisible,

But no one will utter them, no one will smooth their rumpled hair.


There isn't much time, in any case.

There isn't much left to talk about

                           as the year deflates.

There isn't a lot to add.

Road-worn, December-colored, they cluster like unattractive angels

Wherever a thing appears,

Crisp and unspoken, unspeakable

                           in their mute and glittering garb.



All afternoon the clouds have been sliding toward us

                                     out of the

     Blue Ridge.

All afternoon the leaves have scuttled

Across the sidewalk and driveway, clicking their clattery claws.

And now the evening is over us,

Small slices of silence

                 running under a dark rain,

Wrapped in a larger.

moving plates

at the place i volunteer there is a man that swears he can feel an earthquake days before it comes. since the 1970s he says that before a quake he will experience a uniquely terrible headache. he believes that he is ultra sensitive to energy that is released in the earth. because of this, he claims to feel it coming.

i also know a different guy who lives in ohio, claims to be an "apostle", and has a website where he exploits people for money and instructs people with fine detail on how to live their lives. he is into the whole fivefold thing and has used this way of thinking to claim that he is superior in his ability to discern what God says and wants in specific situations--indeed, in almost every situation.

so how do we know what God is saying or doing or wanting when all knowing is only perspective? when does it become dangerous to think that God is on a particular side or behind a particular cause or acting in a specific situation? Obviously we all know the extreme examples of the abuse of this-- the guy in Ohio for example--or things our ancestors did or things that even our contemporaries do in the name of God. But what about having small insights and intuition about things?

sometimes i think i have a glimpse of what is going on; not really a vision, but the outline of a puzzle piece. but then, all of us, all of humanity is driven to create stories and give meaning, give a coherence, a narrative, a morality to events and happenings. i want to know how we know this meaning is from God and not produced by our own spectacularly fantastic imaginations?

a maybe miracle; or at least a weight off my mind

i am not going to go so far as to say this is a miracle, even though that is my instinct: my step-grandmother will not be coming. Just like that. They wanted to stay for two nights and my uncle (who they were riding with) cannot stay that long. Because of this she apparently decided not to come for dinner at all.

She had also wanted my mom to arrange for my grandpa to be able to go hunting with less than 24 hours notice. This was a request impossible for my mom to arrange. Whatever the real reason, she is not coming.

I am not calling this a miracle, because I don't think I am totally in the right to feel so much hatred toward her. Even so, it still feels like a miracle to me personally. The idea of her visit had been stressing me out to the point of having nightmares.

To top it all off last night it snowed.....Evan and I had hoped it would.

The snow makes everything look so beautiful and clean.

hatred, pain and unforgiveness: happy holidays!

1. Yesterday mom and i drove the truck to town and at the store I ran into a woman from my old church. It was really good to see her, but a weird thing happened when we started talking. I noticed she was using a lot of church speak. I had sort of forgotten about this I guess. She started talking about how one of the old pastors of that church had been filling in as pastor for another church and "then he got the calling" and how the "church is ready to receive" and how "God doubled" this and that and how so and she was glad to see me so "blessed". I just sort of nodded and smiled. I guess I forgot about all that jargon.

2.There are two people in this world who cause me more emotion and pain than I think anyone should have to experience. One of these people is my step-grandmother on my mom's side. My step-grandmother makes me feel extreme rage when I see or think about her. I am so angry at her, I cannot think straight. I have to separate myself from her because being around her is unhealthy for me personally. I honestly believe I am justified in hating her because of what she did to my mother. My mom on the other hand is a saint and is trying to have a relationship with her. I cannot stand this. The other person who just thinking about causes unfathomable pain is my father. I only feel dull anger when I think about him. No rage there anymore, the reality of his life and actions have in some ways destroyed me. Instead of feeling rage about my father whenever someone mentions anything having to do with fatherhood or fathers in general I feel like I am being repeatedly stabbed. Sometimes I have even caught myself flinching. But at least I don't have to see my father.

My mom invited her stepmother over for dinner and to my horror they accepted. Is it unchristian of me to hate these people? I really honestly feel justified, outraged and everything else in disliking them. I know that you are supposed to forgive people. But I think there are exceptions. How convenient for me I guess.

I had to cut these people out of my life for my own self-preservation, but now in adulthood I am biannually forced to pretend like everything is dandy, to fake that everything is and always has been wonderful. What a crock.

God have mercy on me, but I will never be able to forgive this woman. I mean come on, at some point doesn't self-perseverance take precedence over forgiving? I cannot think about these people or I will not be able to function. Maybe that's why God created alcohol.

michigan

The weather here is simillar to what we left in Washington, minus some of the rain. The skies are grey and the majority of the leaves have fallen. No snow yet.

I don't know if I blogged about this or not, but at the end of last month my stepdad was tboned pulling out of my mom's drive way. It totalled their Explorer. My stepdad was miraculously uninjured. So two week's ago my mom bought a used Taurus. It died on her on her way to pick my partner and I up from the airport. Things worked out though. They borrowed a car from someone and we didn't have to wait very long. Now mom's car is at the shop, probably at least until we leave. It was the transmission.

The guy that sold it to her told her that he was "going to be the first car salesman to get into heaven".

So these last two days I have sort of been thinking about what a low down guy this person must be. Well today she called him and told him what happened. To my suprise he actually offered to pay for most of the cost. Maybe he will be the first car salesman in heaven.

It is strange to be back here, back home. Last night when I was laying in bed I kept thinking to myself what a dream my life back in the northwest seems like from here. I kept thinking to myself: Did I really graduate college, am I really going to a church that is granting sanctuary to a homeless camp, am I really part of making this camp work, how is all of this possible?

Then I started thinking about how I actually got out of this place, how I actually made it out of here. I started thinking about the different people that saved me, that helped all of us survive. If things hadn't happened exactly like they did, I wouldn't be where I am today.

I really want to start writing out my story.

Well, I am on dial-up internet here, tying up the phone line, so I better go. I am hoping to be able to go to my old church this weekend. I may have to drive my step-dad's 1960-something manual transmission pickup the five miles there though. The good news is that I can actually drive a truck like that. I really want to go and see who is still around.

Ten years ago this coming Sunday I was baptized in that church. I remember going down under the water thinking it should mean something.