Lately, I've just been exhausted. Tired beyond belief, the semester is almost over, but i feel as if I've come out with more scars and bruises than ever before. It's almost over, but at what cost? I know that God is faithful, and that we need to have faith in his goodness. But it's a little bit of a catch 22 that the things you need to be faithful are the very things challenged by the problems you face day to day. The things you need to be strong are the very things made difficult by the problems you face.
Time and again, we are strapped to some irreconcilable grief or evil that afflicts us, and we are sometimes ignored, told to have faith, stop sinning, press through, or just keep on keeping on. These remarks are empty, and filled with vanity, the vanity of self righteousness. What about compassion, what abut binding up the broken hearted? I feel that too many times I have fallen short in realizing that the Spirit of the Lord comes upon me to bind up the broken hearted, to preach liberty to the captives, to preach good news to the poor, and declare the good and acceptable year of The LORD and the day of the vengeance of our God.
The Spirit of The LORD is upon us so that like Jesus we may care for others. When I go through hard times, how often have i sought God's counsel through his Spirit to come upon me and draw me into serving others and binding up their hearts and in the process my own? I sometimes forget that the Spirit of God comes upon me to help me help myself through helping others.
I have often heard about how the anointing is for personal benefit, which by all means is true. How can anyone who has felt the blessedness of actual grace conveyed either through the Eucharist or in prayer deny the self development and personal benefit of actual grace? However, such grace is not meant to be used only for self, but through self, in relation to others. Grace should inspire me to be aware of theirs and to bind up broken hearts, to reach out to heal, to stand with others and comfort them by the grace that is within my life. The grace conveyed from myself to the other, that is where we connect with each other and relate to each other in Christ by the Spirit.
I confess that I have fallen short in proclaiming liberty to the captives in my own life. I have fallen short and allowed myself to become a captive as well. I have failed to be the voice of liberation and comfort to those who need solidarity and guidance, I have failed to love those near me in the ways they need it most, and failed at being the strong one. I have not lived up to expectations and have not strengthened myself in The LORD, nor have I looked to the presence of God for my guidance and support. I have not led people out of captivity, but have entered into captivity with them and at times found myself trapped in the very darkness that i was trying to bring the light of Christ to.
I have not preached good news to the poor, or at least not often enough. I often find myself isolated, contaminated by my own busy mind and packed schedules. My calendar is often overloaded with time to spare and at the same time packed to the brim with things to do. I have often found myself too preoccupied to live out the solidarity that I preach, too focused on my grades and my classes, or just myself to remember the poor. Sometimes, I myself am one of the poor, forgotten and untouched, isolated and alone, but this should not be impeding me from reaching out to others. The problem is that it is the very issues of life that tend to isolate me from others, I keep myself aloof in order to solve something on my own because there are days I have no one I can trust.
I need to remember the good news myself, keep it in my mind when I am poor, that there is a God in Heaven Who has done the unthinkable. While I was estranged and in pure enmity towards Him, a self declared enemy of God, He chose to adopt me into His family. The good news is that this family will reign over all the earth through the firstborn of many brethren, through the God Man who has been appointed to steer the world towards the recapitulation that God has ordained to be His will from the beginning. The good news is that Jesus Christ is already The LORD of this world, and that His kingdom is spreading through the work of his followers, those being conformed to his image and spreading the light of his image throughout the world by resembling him. The good news is that time is being redeemed by the work of God in time, and that all things are being reconciled to God by Christ and the Spirit.
The good and acceptable year of The LORD is now, it is when we choose to do right in the eyes of God. It is when we are the ones who bring the light of Christ into the darkness in the world. Martin Luther King once said that the good and acceptable year of the Lord is when [people] decide to do right. It is when we decide to bless others, to love our enemies, when we bind up the broken-hearted. These all foreshadow the final acceptable time wherein all things will be reconciled to the triune God in blessed assurance of continued purpose in being created by a loving Creator.
Our Father in Heaven has called us to be His agents, and by His Spirit to have compassion, by His Spirit, to give peace, by the same Holy Spirit to deal justly and establish righteousness. We are fallible and will never simply progress towards this goal in time without God. Creation necessarily depends on its Creator.
Any progress that is to be had will be in individuals dedicating themselves to causes and committed to those causes, forming deep bonds of unity with people and the world around them to accomplish those goals which the Kingdom of God has called us to. More important than anything else is to remember that the Holy Spirit, teaches us to bless others, and to help them, by bringing light into their darkness, but it's not a quick fix process. I need to remind myself to look to God for strength for the long haul, this is not an easy bake oven or a microwavable situation. I need to inspire those around me, through real commitment to them, not shadows of real compassion.
This is the vengeance of our God, peace that burns chaos, love that dissolves alienation and marginalization, justice that overcomes failure and defeat injustice and scandal, righteousness that reestablishes order, and sets about the restoration of everything.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Kubla Khan
I have been reading this poem recently, and just really enjoy it, thought I'd share.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
This is Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I love this poem. Coleridge is not only an amazing poet but a brilliant theologian. You may want to look into some of his other works as well.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
This is Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I love this poem. Coleridge is not only an amazing poet but a brilliant theologian. You may want to look into some of his other works as well.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Close Your Eyes with Holy Dread
Close your eyes with holy dread...
Prayer, prayer for me is a moment of holy dread. Not always, sometimes I forget to be afraid of God, other times I am welcomed before Him.
This is what it is to have religion, to come into an encounter with God, holy dread. I remember the first time i ever had a vision of God, I was filled with overwhelming fear at first, there was an objective otherness that enshrouded my mind and captivated all my senses, it was like the skin cells in my pores were flooded with something just outside them that demanded they stand at attention.
Without waiting, i am caught in an endless interlude of presence and absence. To know God is to divest in yourself that means outside yourself by which you come before God for worship. Life is not about fitting God into my schedule, into my story, it's about worshiping objectively the ONE who deserves to be worshiped simply for the fact that He is. There is a dread weight that draws tight the strings upon my heart in the face of overwhelmingly objective holiness.
God is the true objective, and I with all my subjectivity can but wish myself to survive such an encounter. To be stricken with the weight of holiness, and fall before that Holiest of holies, this is my desire. To be filled with Holy Dread, not for lack of love, not for the sake of distance and removing the personal, but because I desire the power of his holiness to enshroud me about with the awareness of an objective God that lies at the center of my heart, as the fuel of my life.
I dunno, i guess i don't really have a point in writing tonight. I just am thinking about this holy dread, it's something i feel i used to know at sometime, some days I feel fallen, divided in myself. I apologize first to myself for failing to unite into a whole the various persons that make up my being. I am not an academic, I am a Christian. I am not just a brain, I am a person. I do not seek to choke out my spiritual life with academics, but to be a Christian amid and between academics, always in the power and presence of the Spirit.
I have no real point tonight, only to say this much:
Father, forgive me my sins, hold me where I am weak
Lord, give me strength to awaken my heart in the midst of my trials
Jesus, I am weak and have failed, I have forgotten to take the straight and narrow path
I have sinned, and cast stones, stolen and forgotten the widows
I have taken bread from the orphans and forsaken your name
I have looked in the mirror, and forgotten what I look like
You are gracious and compassionate
You are the Holy One,
The Great Redeemer is in the midst of his people rejoicing over them with singing
I am not subject to myself, but entrust myself to you
Father, heal this broken weary heart, whose words you can commit to memory,
whose longings you alone can truly know
Help me, fill me with that Holy Dread
Fill me with abounding love,
You have done a great and mighty thing in my life
Let me not forget you in my busy ways
May my heart be near you always
even closer than my very breath
For in you alone do I find my completion
You alone deserve my being,
For you have called me to yourself,
The Spirit says "Come"
The Bride says "Come"
Maranatha,
I await the parousia in my own life,
I eagerly await your kingdom
let it come on earth as in heaven and redeem all things
give us bread that we may share with others,
water so that they never thirst again
give us hope Lord, in One Faith, One Hope, One Lord,
One Body, One Baptism, One God
You alone are truth,
Your word is truth
Be unto me that inseparable vine
so that I may be the branches
You alone are Father,
My heart is overjoyed at your beauty,
Thank you for your reconciliation
I dedicate myself to you again,
Be my healer, as I seek to be your son
Prayer, prayer for me is a moment of holy dread. Not always, sometimes I forget to be afraid of God, other times I am welcomed before Him.
This is what it is to have religion, to come into an encounter with God, holy dread. I remember the first time i ever had a vision of God, I was filled with overwhelming fear at first, there was an objective otherness that enshrouded my mind and captivated all my senses, it was like the skin cells in my pores were flooded with something just outside them that demanded they stand at attention.
Without waiting, i am caught in an endless interlude of presence and absence. To know God is to divest in yourself that means outside yourself by which you come before God for worship. Life is not about fitting God into my schedule, into my story, it's about worshiping objectively the ONE who deserves to be worshiped simply for the fact that He is. There is a dread weight that draws tight the strings upon my heart in the face of overwhelmingly objective holiness.
God is the true objective, and I with all my subjectivity can but wish myself to survive such an encounter. To be stricken with the weight of holiness, and fall before that Holiest of holies, this is my desire. To be filled with Holy Dread, not for lack of love, not for the sake of distance and removing the personal, but because I desire the power of his holiness to enshroud me about with the awareness of an objective God that lies at the center of my heart, as the fuel of my life.
I dunno, i guess i don't really have a point in writing tonight. I just am thinking about this holy dread, it's something i feel i used to know at sometime, some days I feel fallen, divided in myself. I apologize first to myself for failing to unite into a whole the various persons that make up my being. I am not an academic, I am a Christian. I am not just a brain, I am a person. I do not seek to choke out my spiritual life with academics, but to be a Christian amid and between academics, always in the power and presence of the Spirit.
I have no real point tonight, only to say this much:
Father, forgive me my sins, hold me where I am weak
Lord, give me strength to awaken my heart in the midst of my trials
Jesus, I am weak and have failed, I have forgotten to take the straight and narrow path
I have sinned, and cast stones, stolen and forgotten the widows
I have taken bread from the orphans and forsaken your name
I have looked in the mirror, and forgotten what I look like
You are gracious and compassionate
You are the Holy One,
The Great Redeemer is in the midst of his people rejoicing over them with singing
I am not subject to myself, but entrust myself to you
Father, heal this broken weary heart, whose words you can commit to memory,
whose longings you alone can truly know
Help me, fill me with that Holy Dread
Fill me with abounding love,
You have done a great and mighty thing in my life
Let me not forget you in my busy ways
May my heart be near you always
even closer than my very breath
For in you alone do I find my completion
You alone deserve my being,
For you have called me to yourself,
The Spirit says "Come"
The Bride says "Come"
Maranatha,
I await the parousia in my own life,
I eagerly await your kingdom
let it come on earth as in heaven and redeem all things
give us bread that we may share with others,
water so that they never thirst again
give us hope Lord, in One Faith, One Hope, One Lord,
One Body, One Baptism, One God
You alone are truth,
Your word is truth
Be unto me that inseparable vine
so that I may be the branches
You alone are Father,
My heart is overjoyed at your beauty,
Thank you for your reconciliation
I dedicate myself to you again,
Be my healer, as I seek to be your son
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Eulogy for a Friend
This is an older work republished.
And I would ask the sky to shed tears for the lost, including me, for I am beyond any land I have ever known. Destiny whispers faint memories in my ears, and the voices make my mind wander beyond good and evil to a place I have never known before. Everyday is just another trial at the hands of judgment, and penance is an unachievable task for I am forgone the choices of my past existence. I suffer destitution for the sins of my fathers, and I weep for the ashes of the ancients.
I would ask the sky to shed tears for the fallen, for they know not how to stand. In the face of their enemies they have collapsed, and life is no more for them. I would ask the guardians of dreams to guide them through the shadows of this world and into the next. For this is the way of things. Faith teaches us to fight for the ones who can no longer struggle, to stand for those who have no faith, to speak for the voiceless. I would pray that the fallen are found in other dreams, other walks of life, not this poor existence.
I would ask the sky to shed tears on lovers for they are all so lost in this world. May the blessings of Arcadia be their guidance to the true path of this life, for not all is lost without love. The stars will weep for the lovers who are lost by their feuding, and untimely loss will fall away. This is the dying day, when the wise are lost, and the lovers are brilliant. This is the day when the lords of chaos will weep with at their creation of this love. Tonight is a night when all is lost and the world is ended with a single whisper, let the razorblades kiss my flesh this night, and take me away, for in the end the skies will always weep.
I would ask the skies to weep for the lament of the sinners, who try to tear away from the lies of this world. There is no freedom in this world without disbelieving that it is. Fresh tears will caress the dead as they pass. And the Skies will shed tears.
And I would ask the sky to shed tears for the lost, including me, for I am beyond any land I have ever known. Destiny whispers faint memories in my ears, and the voices make my mind wander beyond good and evil to a place I have never known before. Everyday is just another trial at the hands of judgment, and penance is an unachievable task for I am forgone the choices of my past existence. I suffer destitution for the sins of my fathers, and I weep for the ashes of the ancients.
I would ask the sky to shed tears for the fallen, for they know not how to stand. In the face of their enemies they have collapsed, and life is no more for them. I would ask the guardians of dreams to guide them through the shadows of this world and into the next. For this is the way of things. Faith teaches us to fight for the ones who can no longer struggle, to stand for those who have no faith, to speak for the voiceless. I would pray that the fallen are found in other dreams, other walks of life, not this poor existence.
I would ask the sky to shed tears on lovers for they are all so lost in this world. May the blessings of Arcadia be their guidance to the true path of this life, for not all is lost without love. The stars will weep for the lovers who are lost by their feuding, and untimely loss will fall away. This is the dying day, when the wise are lost, and the lovers are brilliant. This is the day when the lords of chaos will weep with at their creation of this love. Tonight is a night when all is lost and the world is ended with a single whisper, let the razorblades kiss my flesh this night, and take me away, for in the end the skies will always weep.
I would ask the skies to weep for the lament of the sinners, who try to tear away from the lies of this world. There is no freedom in this world without disbelieving that it is. Fresh tears will caress the dead as they pass. And the Skies will shed tears.
Untitled
Turn around slowly, and let the fire consume your eyes
an empty lullaby today, the death of poetry tomorrow
God is dead they say, standing in an ovate circle
They, contemplate the death of the oven bird over coffee
This is for you,
Watch the tragedy of our fallen state consume you as you feel the world,
Awake from your dogmatic slumber
and shake the age old dust that burdens you
Shake off the carefree detachment of scientific analysis
and feel the world for what it is
Feel that beating heart,
the cries of innocents and the voices of martyrs
Convulse yourself to breathing life
and open your ears to hear the cries,
Feel the tremors of our whole existence
shuddering under the burden of our indifference
Bring yourself to life,
convulse yourself to meaning
Unnerve yourself and take these words like prophecy,
Letting them burn in your bones like a Mandate
Then, reach out weary, tired hands,
To help another breathe again
an empty lullaby today, the death of poetry tomorrow
God is dead they say, standing in an ovate circle
They, contemplate the death of the oven bird over coffee
This is for you,
Watch the tragedy of our fallen state consume you as you feel the world,
Awake from your dogmatic slumber
and shake the age old dust that burdens you
Shake off the carefree detachment of scientific analysis
and feel the world for what it is
Feel that beating heart,
the cries of innocents and the voices of martyrs
Convulse yourself to breathing life
and open your ears to hear the cries,
Feel the tremors of our whole existence
shuddering under the burden of our indifference
Bring yourself to life,
convulse yourself to meaning
Unnerve yourself and take these words like prophecy,
Letting them burn in your bones like a Mandate
Then, reach out weary, tired hands,
To help another breathe again
Sunday, April 13, 2008
History After the Gospel: What if Anything Does it Mean?
Perspectives on Suffering and the Gospel in Reality
The Spirit of God lives within us. How often do we hear that, among my Charismatic friends that entails, speaking in tongues and miracles, but do we really consider the idea? THere is a wholly other triune person, living within our very being, having its essence in and alongside with our essence. Developing us in relation to Himself. The power of the Spirit is something you will hear about in just about any Charismatic church, about how God empowers us with a force we must release in order to make it effective. But that reduces and subjects the role of the Spirit to an impersonal power that indwells us, not a triune person that has the power and thus grants it to us from within. The Spirit of God is not just impersonal power that we must release, and I feel as if this is not treated fairly in circles I have been in.
We do not ask the Spirit to guide us from within except as the function of a voice, not as a whole person unto himself that is simultaneously without and within us. To be with God is to be in communion with God by the Spirit. We must interact with the person of the Spirit to be with God. The Eucharist points excellently to the indwelling nature of Christ within us. As we ingest the bread and the wine, the body and blood we experience grace, and such grace is experienced from within. Why is this? Because in the same manner the Spirit which is a person and not a force as bread and wine represent the actual Christ, conveys grace to us. The Eucharist is a symbol of our reception of Christ and the Spirit, by which we know the communion we need necessarily shapes and makes our being.
Thus our identity is again, a relation, between ourselves and the Spirit which while both remain separate from each other are joined to each other, as when in marriage the wife and husband to not become a single entity of being with both sex organs and a single consciousness but rather find the fullness of identity in relation to the other, so we too must find our being in relation to God. We do not become one with God because human marriage is the greatest analogy of that which should happen to us, we should be joined in intimate communion, aware of our being that participates in the being of another, but at the same time we are fully ourselves. The modern agenda of individual liberation form everything that is other in pursuit of authentic identity has only succeeded to remove itself from authentic identity. Identity, in every human relation is found in terms of the other.
What about mystics, and people trapped in desert places by themselves, are they less of people? Yes, and no. Yes they do not have the relationality that others in and amongst people. Thus they lack a vital element of humanness. But no, because there is still something other when we are all alone. There is the ever enduring and personal presence of the Spirit who is everywhere, and with everything, but there is also the world. The world is something other, and in terms of it also we come to know ourselves. We are always in the presence of something other, though whether we choose to engage it or not is our choice.
Relating to the other can bring us hope. In terms of the real spirit which lives with us it can bring us great comfort and hope to know the other. Finding ourselves comfortable in relations cam bring us great personal hope at the constant realization that we are not alone. But there are times when we are distraught and fraught with peril and despair at the sight of reality, but this is when we need to find hope and can find hope. Our hope is in Christ, and in his person, as the one who brings us hope.
We need hope, it is necessary to our existence. As Christians, we should hold to a personal revelation and expectation of the hope that we await to reveal itself. We need a personal expectation of the gospel that dwells among us. The gospel needs to have a personal and real presence in our lives and beings. Without such a life we are empty and have no hope at all. the gospel and its message need to dwell among us. a realization of the impending redemption of all things should live in our minds and have a real presence in our lives and actions.
The gospel is among us, its presence is known in our lives by the hope that we carry within ourselves. The gospel is not abstract ideals but is known as a personal and living reality. THe gospel must have its presence among us necessarily, because it like us is in the world but not of the world, influencing the world. We cannot forget the power of the good news of the kingdom of God that dwells among us as more than just the fact that we can now go to church and fit in with "the people of the pews." Really, The power of the gospel is that it has personal power and relevance to every believer the world around.
In the midst of our suffering, we can look back on history and see that something has happened in history which has been done in our behalf. The New Testament writers witnessed something powerful and unique in the person of Jesus beyond just teachings or a god way of living. They saw something personally significant in his resurrection that allowed them to know that Jesus was with them in their lives.
The gospel is still among us today, in our hearts, as a reality beyond just intellectual or even intuitive assent. It is a reality, a powerful reality that carries presence, beyond just the words and ideas around which we shape our language about the gospel. The gospel's purpose is to be among the people as a kerygmatic reality, to be among the people in proclamative presence. As we approach the valleys of our lives and find ourselves in them, we can acknowledge that we are not alone, that our hope is not in ourselves or in history, not in politics, not in emotional good feelings, not in self help, not in personal eternity after this life, but in the cosmic reconciliation of all things including but not limited to ourselves, our hope is in the true and living God. Our hope is found in the presence of the one who has declared from the beginning that we shall be saved. Our hope lies in the reality of a good and beneficial God who has personal redemption in mind for each of us.
Our hope is not idealism, we do not tell ourselves that the world is getting better and better without any alis, nor do we tell ourselves that it is so damned that it only serves to be destroyed. Our hope is that the God we see revealed in the person of Jesus Christ is among us, and living within and through us to indwell the world with His presence and Spirit. The gospel, is among us, it is in the air, in the words we speak, in our breath, in the grass and the trees, whispers of it can be heard in the mountains, and in the valleys, in the fire and in the water, in the trees. Creation knows something is coming, we know something is coming, yet is already among us beginning to change things within us, beginning to usher us into a new reality.
Our hope is not that Jesus would come back and take us out of the world,but that we would be kept in the world but kept from evil. We await not the destruction at the end of the age, but the redemption that is already breaking forth in each of our lives to appear suddenly and like a forest breaking through a city and transforming it, so to see the new heavens and new earth break forth out of this present reality and change, not only the world, but everything. The gospel is among us, it lives in our fingertips, in our emotions, in our suffering, in our triumphs.
The message of the gospel is not words alone but that which indwells the words and gives them life, that which lives among us in power and might, the very Spirit of the Living God. The spirit lives within us, we have a wholly transcendent Other, fully within ourselves as Christians. We have a completely different being not just upon us, but within us, working out the same resurrection that was worked out in Christ. This is the gospel in our midst: That the Spirit that omnipresently inhabits all things, even the very depths of Sheol as the psalmist says, is within us working through us and an actual presence for our lives. The gospel is a reality, the cross which is its center is our center.
As we face discouragement and labors, trials and temptations let us remember that something real and true happened to us because of Jesus Christ, and that because of this something true that has happened in history so too our history has a purpose. Divine history did not culminate in the incarnation, there is purpose to this life, even after the ascension of Jesus. History still has a purpose because we will be transformed at the last, and all those things which have been used in labor unto God will be tested. Everything we have set to use will be appropriated by the kingdom, and redelivered into our hands so that we can work out in the new heavens and earth the will of God as a present reality with those faculties, members and parts of ourselves that have been dedicated unto righteousness.
God's will is to appropriate all that we can offer, and fill it with his presence as wine fills a chalice. The wine is not the chalice, nor does the wine become the chalice, rather creation is built to house God's presence among his creatures and to be filled with his love, but still individual from and separate from.
Hope then takes this form, we know that the world we live in was created as "very good" and while fallen continues to have purpose, and that purpose is to be redeemed unto God through the gospel which has a real and active presence not merely as language or proclamation but as a reality unto itself made so by the Spirit.
History after the incarnation matters because God is going to use everything that has been put into his trust to extend his kingdom over all the earth. Our talents and "members" will be transformed and enhanced. Our talents will be renewed,a nd life itself will be completely different, yet altogether, not just a spiritual detachment but a grounding in this world, which needs the redempton that in Christ, we too can offer it.
Thus we can conclude that while we acknowledge and not blindly or arbitrarily the suffering that plagues the world, we look to God to be the solution to those problems, we must face the horrors of reality as we see them. There are those who today are raped, tortured, sold into slavery and killed, today in the world, parents kill children and children kill teachers, elders, each other as well. Violence takes place over inches and miles of land, children step on land mines, people lose limbs in combat, and female children are tossed aside into the garbage. These are realities that we do not ignore, push aside or turn away from.
You must hold yourself in front of them until it hurts, until your heart breaks with sorrow, until you cannot remember yourself anymore and all that exists is the suffering of humanity. You must feel every beating upon the skin of a scared and tormented housewife, every beating at the hands of a drunken father, every betrayal for the sake of material gain, every ounce of blood shed in the name of ideas. But once you have reached that place, it is not yours to remain there. To feel these things is to know the heart of God, but knowing alone is not ours. Once there, if we remain we will be overcome by distress and despair, and fall into a vulgar pessimism about life and God. When really our purpose is to realize these things are not culpable to God though we should wrestle with the reality of an omnipotent God allowing such suffering.
To know God is to wrestle with Him, and to ask the hard questions, not without reverence, but also not without really pressing to know why. We must be as Abraham and Moses, and ask the Father, why things are not getting better. We must be as Jesus and pray to the Father that the kingdom would come. We must live in awareness of the Spirit among us and in us and thus beg the hard questions of God. The problem of evil is no less complicated now than when it was first indicated by the first human thought that there was a real evil in the world. To truly know God is to beg the difficult questions and honestly expect an answer, not just passively submit mindlessly. To know God requires reverence, and honor that is due among friends, but does not require us to mindlessly accept things we do not understand.
To know God, is also to know grace, in the face of things we cannot comprehend, and then to accept in loving kindness that things are still being revealed to us in measures. To know God is to be gracious unto Him, as unto a lover. God is a reality, not a joke, not something we consent to, not an abstract person, but a person as real as your or I, as real as the lover in our marriage bed, as real as the children you have, as real as the friends you truly know from heart to heart.
God is not an empty idea, but a person, as we are people, this is known in Jesus Christ. God is Jesus, and therefore God has personhood. We cannot live with abstracts anymore, neither could the New Testament writers. They did not say Jesus represented God, they prayed to Him as God. God is personal, not impersonal, present in reality by the Spirit, and immanently concerned for us all.
We need to remember that grace is real. That the forgiveness of sins is not a divine joke, and that the reconciliation of all things is not going to turn out to be the greatest practical joke in all history. Rather, we need to remember that grace that is extended to us by the Lord, and remember that we are all called to inherit such a grace. We are all made to be filled with God's presence and to hope in the eventual and impending reconciliation of all things. We are not hopeless idealists, but realistically concerned with God's action in the world as a reconciler, eagerly urging on the redemption which has begun in us the people of God, and will break forth suddenly to redeem all things.
I hope this has made some sense somewhere, and that in reading these words something has come alive within you.
The Spirit of God lives within us. How often do we hear that, among my Charismatic friends that entails, speaking in tongues and miracles, but do we really consider the idea? THere is a wholly other triune person, living within our very being, having its essence in and alongside with our essence. Developing us in relation to Himself. The power of the Spirit is something you will hear about in just about any Charismatic church, about how God empowers us with a force we must release in order to make it effective. But that reduces and subjects the role of the Spirit to an impersonal power that indwells us, not a triune person that has the power and thus grants it to us from within. The Spirit of God is not just impersonal power that we must release, and I feel as if this is not treated fairly in circles I have been in.
We do not ask the Spirit to guide us from within except as the function of a voice, not as a whole person unto himself that is simultaneously without and within us. To be with God is to be in communion with God by the Spirit. We must interact with the person of the Spirit to be with God. The Eucharist points excellently to the indwelling nature of Christ within us. As we ingest the bread and the wine, the body and blood we experience grace, and such grace is experienced from within. Why is this? Because in the same manner the Spirit which is a person and not a force as bread and wine represent the actual Christ, conveys grace to us. The Eucharist is a symbol of our reception of Christ and the Spirit, by which we know the communion we need necessarily shapes and makes our being.
Thus our identity is again, a relation, between ourselves and the Spirit which while both remain separate from each other are joined to each other, as when in marriage the wife and husband to not become a single entity of being with both sex organs and a single consciousness but rather find the fullness of identity in relation to the other, so we too must find our being in relation to God. We do not become one with God because human marriage is the greatest analogy of that which should happen to us, we should be joined in intimate communion, aware of our being that participates in the being of another, but at the same time we are fully ourselves. The modern agenda of individual liberation form everything that is other in pursuit of authentic identity has only succeeded to remove itself from authentic identity. Identity, in every human relation is found in terms of the other.
What about mystics, and people trapped in desert places by themselves, are they less of people? Yes, and no. Yes they do not have the relationality that others in and amongst people. Thus they lack a vital element of humanness. But no, because there is still something other when we are all alone. There is the ever enduring and personal presence of the Spirit who is everywhere, and with everything, but there is also the world. The world is something other, and in terms of it also we come to know ourselves. We are always in the presence of something other, though whether we choose to engage it or not is our choice.
Relating to the other can bring us hope. In terms of the real spirit which lives with us it can bring us great comfort and hope to know the other. Finding ourselves comfortable in relations cam bring us great personal hope at the constant realization that we are not alone. But there are times when we are distraught and fraught with peril and despair at the sight of reality, but this is when we need to find hope and can find hope. Our hope is in Christ, and in his person, as the one who brings us hope.
We need hope, it is necessary to our existence. As Christians, we should hold to a personal revelation and expectation of the hope that we await to reveal itself. We need a personal expectation of the gospel that dwells among us. The gospel needs to have a personal and real presence in our lives and beings. Without such a life we are empty and have no hope at all. the gospel and its message need to dwell among us. a realization of the impending redemption of all things should live in our minds and have a real presence in our lives and actions.
The gospel is among us, its presence is known in our lives by the hope that we carry within ourselves. The gospel is not abstract ideals but is known as a personal and living reality. THe gospel must have its presence among us necessarily, because it like us is in the world but not of the world, influencing the world. We cannot forget the power of the good news of the kingdom of God that dwells among us as more than just the fact that we can now go to church and fit in with "the people of the pews." Really, The power of the gospel is that it has personal power and relevance to every believer the world around.
In the midst of our suffering, we can look back on history and see that something has happened in history which has been done in our behalf. The New Testament writers witnessed something powerful and unique in the person of Jesus beyond just teachings or a god way of living. They saw something personally significant in his resurrection that allowed them to know that Jesus was with them in their lives.
The gospel is still among us today, in our hearts, as a reality beyond just intellectual or even intuitive assent. It is a reality, a powerful reality that carries presence, beyond just the words and ideas around which we shape our language about the gospel. The gospel's purpose is to be among the people as a kerygmatic reality, to be among the people in proclamative presence. As we approach the valleys of our lives and find ourselves in them, we can acknowledge that we are not alone, that our hope is not in ourselves or in history, not in politics, not in emotional good feelings, not in self help, not in personal eternity after this life, but in the cosmic reconciliation of all things including but not limited to ourselves, our hope is in the true and living God. Our hope is found in the presence of the one who has declared from the beginning that we shall be saved. Our hope lies in the reality of a good and beneficial God who has personal redemption in mind for each of us.
Our hope is not idealism, we do not tell ourselves that the world is getting better and better without any alis, nor do we tell ourselves that it is so damned that it only serves to be destroyed. Our hope is that the God we see revealed in the person of Jesus Christ is among us, and living within and through us to indwell the world with His presence and Spirit. The gospel, is among us, it is in the air, in the words we speak, in our breath, in the grass and the trees, whispers of it can be heard in the mountains, and in the valleys, in the fire and in the water, in the trees. Creation knows something is coming, we know something is coming, yet is already among us beginning to change things within us, beginning to usher us into a new reality.
Our hope is not that Jesus would come back and take us out of the world,but that we would be kept in the world but kept from evil. We await not the destruction at the end of the age, but the redemption that is already breaking forth in each of our lives to appear suddenly and like a forest breaking through a city and transforming it, so to see the new heavens and new earth break forth out of this present reality and change, not only the world, but everything. The gospel is among us, it lives in our fingertips, in our emotions, in our suffering, in our triumphs.
The message of the gospel is not words alone but that which indwells the words and gives them life, that which lives among us in power and might, the very Spirit of the Living God. The spirit lives within us, we have a wholly transcendent Other, fully within ourselves as Christians. We have a completely different being not just upon us, but within us, working out the same resurrection that was worked out in Christ. This is the gospel in our midst: That the Spirit that omnipresently inhabits all things, even the very depths of Sheol as the psalmist says, is within us working through us and an actual presence for our lives. The gospel is a reality, the cross which is its center is our center.
As we face discouragement and labors, trials and temptations let us remember that something real and true happened to us because of Jesus Christ, and that because of this something true that has happened in history so too our history has a purpose. Divine history did not culminate in the incarnation, there is purpose to this life, even after the ascension of Jesus. History still has a purpose because we will be transformed at the last, and all those things which have been used in labor unto God will be tested. Everything we have set to use will be appropriated by the kingdom, and redelivered into our hands so that we can work out in the new heavens and earth the will of God as a present reality with those faculties, members and parts of ourselves that have been dedicated unto righteousness.
God's will is to appropriate all that we can offer, and fill it with his presence as wine fills a chalice. The wine is not the chalice, nor does the wine become the chalice, rather creation is built to house God's presence among his creatures and to be filled with his love, but still individual from and separate from.
Hope then takes this form, we know that the world we live in was created as "very good" and while fallen continues to have purpose, and that purpose is to be redeemed unto God through the gospel which has a real and active presence not merely as language or proclamation but as a reality unto itself made so by the Spirit.
History after the incarnation matters because God is going to use everything that has been put into his trust to extend his kingdom over all the earth. Our talents and "members" will be transformed and enhanced. Our talents will be renewed,a nd life itself will be completely different, yet altogether, not just a spiritual detachment but a grounding in this world, which needs the redempton that in Christ, we too can offer it.
Thus we can conclude that while we acknowledge and not blindly or arbitrarily the suffering that plagues the world, we look to God to be the solution to those problems, we must face the horrors of reality as we see them. There are those who today are raped, tortured, sold into slavery and killed, today in the world, parents kill children and children kill teachers, elders, each other as well. Violence takes place over inches and miles of land, children step on land mines, people lose limbs in combat, and female children are tossed aside into the garbage. These are realities that we do not ignore, push aside or turn away from.
You must hold yourself in front of them until it hurts, until your heart breaks with sorrow, until you cannot remember yourself anymore and all that exists is the suffering of humanity. You must feel every beating upon the skin of a scared and tormented housewife, every beating at the hands of a drunken father, every betrayal for the sake of material gain, every ounce of blood shed in the name of ideas. But once you have reached that place, it is not yours to remain there. To feel these things is to know the heart of God, but knowing alone is not ours. Once there, if we remain we will be overcome by distress and despair, and fall into a vulgar pessimism about life and God. When really our purpose is to realize these things are not culpable to God though we should wrestle with the reality of an omnipotent God allowing such suffering.
To know God is to wrestle with Him, and to ask the hard questions, not without reverence, but also not without really pressing to know why. We must be as Abraham and Moses, and ask the Father, why things are not getting better. We must be as Jesus and pray to the Father that the kingdom would come. We must live in awareness of the Spirit among us and in us and thus beg the hard questions of God. The problem of evil is no less complicated now than when it was first indicated by the first human thought that there was a real evil in the world. To truly know God is to beg the difficult questions and honestly expect an answer, not just passively submit mindlessly. To know God requires reverence, and honor that is due among friends, but does not require us to mindlessly accept things we do not understand.
To know God, is also to know grace, in the face of things we cannot comprehend, and then to accept in loving kindness that things are still being revealed to us in measures. To know God is to be gracious unto Him, as unto a lover. God is a reality, not a joke, not something we consent to, not an abstract person, but a person as real as your or I, as real as the lover in our marriage bed, as real as the children you have, as real as the friends you truly know from heart to heart.
God is not an empty idea, but a person, as we are people, this is known in Jesus Christ. God is Jesus, and therefore God has personhood. We cannot live with abstracts anymore, neither could the New Testament writers. They did not say Jesus represented God, they prayed to Him as God. God is personal, not impersonal, present in reality by the Spirit, and immanently concerned for us all.
We need to remember that grace is real. That the forgiveness of sins is not a divine joke, and that the reconciliation of all things is not going to turn out to be the greatest practical joke in all history. Rather, we need to remember that grace that is extended to us by the Lord, and remember that we are all called to inherit such a grace. We are all made to be filled with God's presence and to hope in the eventual and impending reconciliation of all things. We are not hopeless idealists, but realistically concerned with God's action in the world as a reconciler, eagerly urging on the redemption which has begun in us the people of God, and will break forth suddenly to redeem all things.
I hope this has made some sense somewhere, and that in reading these words something has come alive within you.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Echoes, Memory and Individualism In Focus
Echoes, echoes are an amalgam of voices, they enshroud us, surround us, and draw us into themselves. Echoes invite us to enter into another realm, into some faraway and distant place that is simultaneously closer to us than we ourselves. Echoes are expressed in the genetics that we carry, they are memories of everyone who has contributed to our identity. Echoes are expressed in the stories we carry in memory, they beckon us beyond self awareness into a reflection of our composite nature. We are individual, but our individuality is not detached from the places we come from, the genes that make us, and the stories we carry in our hearts. Echoes when they happen in real time, are a manifestation of memory, an awareness of the 'us' that is inside every 'me.'
Echoes are an awareness of memory, a remembering of everything that makes up our being. We are composite systems of relations, our relations are unified into a single consciousness, but we are nevertheless a system of relations. Another way of saying this is that, we have emerged out of something, never, ex nihilo. To believe otherwise is to displace community and heritage for a self created meaning that stands over against the truth of what identity really is. We are not conscious in the universe alone as floating arbitrary beings that define ourselves and refine ourselves by ourselves. We have come from somewhere, and that somewhere is in our skins, in our hair, in our eyes, in our smiles, in our memories and pasts, in our futures, in the things we hope for, and the disappointments we share among one another. We have ideas that were not born in a vacuum, but are the product of observation, genetics, inclination and intuition. Our individual consciousness depends on the interactions we have between ourselves and others, between the past and the present, between our bodies and the world around it, between imagination and reason, between language and the divine, between the spoken, and the ineffable.
Whispers in the essence of who we are make up some of the quirks and choices that we make and being aware of those whispers is how we will find our true individual consciousness. Individual consciousness is a composite dialogue between several varying awarenesses that indwell our entire "selves," wholistically. To be aware of the past is to look to those things which contriute to an awareness of place, an awareness of where it is we come from, an anchor from which we set out in search of bringing new things back to where we came from. But it is also necessary to be conscious of the present, by realizing the present as a means of self expression and as an opportunity to give and receive freedom amid others. The present calls us to an awareness of the reality and particularity of ourselves, in which we live aware of the past but allow it to act as a voice amid the consciousness of our whole, not the determined end of it. Individual Consciousness necessarily depends on the awareness of the past as a guide to which we are anchored, and an intimacy with the present through which we acknowledge the need to become a self through choices we make and our reactions to the relations that we encounter.
In relation to the lives of others, our consciousness and being depend on being aware of others as relationally in need of interaction as we are. In the church there are times of solitude, contemplations, meditations, solaces and individual yearnings after God, but in the larger context of life our being depends on our relations to others. Our being depends on our being able to connect with others and be their liberators.
Our freedom in self-awareness is not a call to detachment but instead provides us the opportunity to interact with others in mutual relations that ask us to identify between one another using our getting to know others as a means of coming to know ourselves, as well as with one one another working together to find mutual identity amidst each other, and finally to identify ourselves as individuals indwelling one another, realizing that as Christians, we are dwelling within one another as one body, not to say that we are all the same, or share a hive mentality, but that in our individual expressions there is a single spirit that unites us.
That same Spirit which is The Spirit of Christ, seeks to bestow upon us unity as well as diversity, so that being happens in relation to others but individually as well as we discern what we are and what we are not in relation to other things. For a short analogy, being would occur as we dialogue with our relations, we learn what we are, as if by looking within another we see the contrasts and comparisons between ourselves and the others. So that when we look we are given a picture of those things which we are or wish to become as well as those things which are not part of our being and thus show us the boundaries of that which we would call our self.
God has united us by one spirit and that same spirit calls us to remember the echoes, the communal memory of those who have gone before us, those who live on in our bodies through our genes, those whose stories we carry in our hearts, whose lives shape parts of the direction of our own.
Our own individual memory serves us as well. Not just the echoes. Echoes, are in fact only a mere part of the memory we seek for ourselves. Memory grounds us in our identity, remembering is something beautiful. Memory is our grounding as beings, it is in memory that we have an awareness of who we wish to be through seeing who we have been. Memory in the context of a single being has an infinite value which can be associated with it, in that it is the only intangible thing which has a real presence outside of God. Memories can haunt, comfort, speak, even echo, or resonate.
In memory we find an obligation, the need to recall, to respect, that which has been and to look forward with an awareness of that past. We have an obligation to commemoration, by this I mean we have a duty to remember as a community, as a communion, to co-remember, but also to call forth that past into our present through an awareness of it. By this I simply mean, we as individuals must remember the nature of our relations in searching for being, and as communities, we must remember to listen to the voices that echo within us, to the other memory, the voices of a thousand ancestors past, and remember the places we have been through them, the evils we have faced as well as the victories we have had, the gravities of despair, as well as the heights of triumph.
Memory helps shape individual consciousness, and develop us into communal awareness. There is a necessary tension between relation and alienation, individualism tends to make the individual being of such importance that anything other, including friends and family are seen as infringements upon the freedom of the one. But in seeking freedom for oneself, one must also realize that without balance, anything that is other will necessarily be subordinate to our one.
Nietzsche was right to describe the will to power, without a conception of things that are other as having value for their relations to us, and without a value for any relations between self and things that are other, one necessarily creates a system where only the self matters. Where only aesthetic nihilism can flourish. Individualism with the goal of asserting a pure individual self will always suppress the role of anything that is other, so that in the end that assertion ends in power struggle after power struggle, failure or success alone.
In terms of God, individualism can strip us of God because it takes from us an awareness of the echoes, of the memories, of the many, the others in our lives, the communities we participate in, as well as our ability to relate to anything outside ourselves. This can become dangerous when we lose our ability to find a God that is wholly other yet relatable, in our striving to relate to ourselves and fit God in that picture, we can misrepresent and even destroy a working positive image of God before us. We can skew the voice of God and interpret it through radical subjectivity so that there is no God, in the end only interpretation based on the assertion of self over anything else. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were right to say that was a possible outcome of modernity, only one of two things can happen in the face of a society that is modern.
Either we become part of the crowd and join untruth, part of the herd that makes us passive and disinterested, or we become power striving totalitarians, out of a necessity to meet the ideals of pure self subsistence.
So what do we do with all this? In short, we need a dual awareness of ourselves as united, many relations, with a single consciousness, as individuals. Furthermore we must remember the power with which we can recall those who have gone before, and those who are presently with us. We must be aware of our individuality in terms of relations, and how we are all interconnected, and made up of interconnections.
Memory/Echoes, Awareness, Existence, these three are one, and find one consciousness in those who unite them into one being. These are parts of consciousness, again not an end all say all, just an idea.
We are the relations we dwell in. Our being takes place in between the objects of self and other. The self, still remains fully self, the other still remains fully other, but there is meaning in the middle, and that meaning, that interaction is what makes our being a being at all, the dialogue between relations.
We are the relations we care for, and cultivate. Our being will be shown in the spaces between ourselves and others, the life of the spirit is found in our selves, but is most evident in the spaces between ourselves and others. Why else would they have an inherently social nature, one has never needed to be patient without some outside force requiring it. The spirit can guide us, giving us an awareness of the space between ourselves and others, showing us ourselves in the relations we have. Those relations are our mirror.
We are the relations we dwell in. Our being, both as individuals and communities will expose itself most strongly in our relations to the other, to memory, to echoes, to breathing in memories, and breathing out wisdom.
Breathe in, absorb your past, Open your eyes, and flooded with the light of awareness, become that which you are called to become.
Echoes are an awareness of memory, a remembering of everything that makes up our being. We are composite systems of relations, our relations are unified into a single consciousness, but we are nevertheless a system of relations. Another way of saying this is that, we have emerged out of something, never, ex nihilo. To believe otherwise is to displace community and heritage for a self created meaning that stands over against the truth of what identity really is. We are not conscious in the universe alone as floating arbitrary beings that define ourselves and refine ourselves by ourselves. We have come from somewhere, and that somewhere is in our skins, in our hair, in our eyes, in our smiles, in our memories and pasts, in our futures, in the things we hope for, and the disappointments we share among one another. We have ideas that were not born in a vacuum, but are the product of observation, genetics, inclination and intuition. Our individual consciousness depends on the interactions we have between ourselves and others, between the past and the present, between our bodies and the world around it, between imagination and reason, between language and the divine, between the spoken, and the ineffable.
Whispers in the essence of who we are make up some of the quirks and choices that we make and being aware of those whispers is how we will find our true individual consciousness. Individual consciousness is a composite dialogue between several varying awarenesses that indwell our entire "selves," wholistically. To be aware of the past is to look to those things which contriute to an awareness of place, an awareness of where it is we come from, an anchor from which we set out in search of bringing new things back to where we came from. But it is also necessary to be conscious of the present, by realizing the present as a means of self expression and as an opportunity to give and receive freedom amid others. The present calls us to an awareness of the reality and particularity of ourselves, in which we live aware of the past but allow it to act as a voice amid the consciousness of our whole, not the determined end of it. Individual Consciousness necessarily depends on the awareness of the past as a guide to which we are anchored, and an intimacy with the present through which we acknowledge the need to become a self through choices we make and our reactions to the relations that we encounter.
In relation to the lives of others, our consciousness and being depend on being aware of others as relationally in need of interaction as we are. In the church there are times of solitude, contemplations, meditations, solaces and individual yearnings after God, but in the larger context of life our being depends on our relations to others. Our being depends on our being able to connect with others and be their liberators.
Our freedom in self-awareness is not a call to detachment but instead provides us the opportunity to interact with others in mutual relations that ask us to identify between one another using our getting to know others as a means of coming to know ourselves, as well as with one one another working together to find mutual identity amidst each other, and finally to identify ourselves as individuals indwelling one another, realizing that as Christians, we are dwelling within one another as one body, not to say that we are all the same, or share a hive mentality, but that in our individual expressions there is a single spirit that unites us.
That same Spirit which is The Spirit of Christ, seeks to bestow upon us unity as well as diversity, so that being happens in relation to others but individually as well as we discern what we are and what we are not in relation to other things. For a short analogy, being would occur as we dialogue with our relations, we learn what we are, as if by looking within another we see the contrasts and comparisons between ourselves and the others. So that when we look we are given a picture of those things which we are or wish to become as well as those things which are not part of our being and thus show us the boundaries of that which we would call our self.
God has united us by one spirit and that same spirit calls us to remember the echoes, the communal memory of those who have gone before us, those who live on in our bodies through our genes, those whose stories we carry in our hearts, whose lives shape parts of the direction of our own.
Our own individual memory serves us as well. Not just the echoes. Echoes, are in fact only a mere part of the memory we seek for ourselves. Memory grounds us in our identity, remembering is something beautiful. Memory is our grounding as beings, it is in memory that we have an awareness of who we wish to be through seeing who we have been. Memory in the context of a single being has an infinite value which can be associated with it, in that it is the only intangible thing which has a real presence outside of God. Memories can haunt, comfort, speak, even echo, or resonate.
In memory we find an obligation, the need to recall, to respect, that which has been and to look forward with an awareness of that past. We have an obligation to commemoration, by this I mean we have a duty to remember as a community, as a communion, to co-remember, but also to call forth that past into our present through an awareness of it. By this I simply mean, we as individuals must remember the nature of our relations in searching for being, and as communities, we must remember to listen to the voices that echo within us, to the other memory, the voices of a thousand ancestors past, and remember the places we have been through them, the evils we have faced as well as the victories we have had, the gravities of despair, as well as the heights of triumph.
Memory helps shape individual consciousness, and develop us into communal awareness. There is a necessary tension between relation and alienation, individualism tends to make the individual being of such importance that anything other, including friends and family are seen as infringements upon the freedom of the one. But in seeking freedom for oneself, one must also realize that without balance, anything that is other will necessarily be subordinate to our one.
Nietzsche was right to describe the will to power, without a conception of things that are other as having value for their relations to us, and without a value for any relations between self and things that are other, one necessarily creates a system where only the self matters. Where only aesthetic nihilism can flourish. Individualism with the goal of asserting a pure individual self will always suppress the role of anything that is other, so that in the end that assertion ends in power struggle after power struggle, failure or success alone.
In terms of God, individualism can strip us of God because it takes from us an awareness of the echoes, of the memories, of the many, the others in our lives, the communities we participate in, as well as our ability to relate to anything outside ourselves. This can become dangerous when we lose our ability to find a God that is wholly other yet relatable, in our striving to relate to ourselves and fit God in that picture, we can misrepresent and even destroy a working positive image of God before us. We can skew the voice of God and interpret it through radical subjectivity so that there is no God, in the end only interpretation based on the assertion of self over anything else. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were right to say that was a possible outcome of modernity, only one of two things can happen in the face of a society that is modern.
Either we become part of the crowd and join untruth, part of the herd that makes us passive and disinterested, or we become power striving totalitarians, out of a necessity to meet the ideals of pure self subsistence.
So what do we do with all this? In short, we need a dual awareness of ourselves as united, many relations, with a single consciousness, as individuals. Furthermore we must remember the power with which we can recall those who have gone before, and those who are presently with us. We must be aware of our individuality in terms of relations, and how we are all interconnected, and made up of interconnections.
Memory/Echoes, Awareness, Existence, these three are one, and find one consciousness in those who unite them into one being. These are parts of consciousness, again not an end all say all, just an idea.
We are the relations we dwell in. Our being takes place in between the objects of self and other. The self, still remains fully self, the other still remains fully other, but there is meaning in the middle, and that meaning, that interaction is what makes our being a being at all, the dialogue between relations.
We are the relations we care for, and cultivate. Our being will be shown in the spaces between ourselves and others, the life of the spirit is found in our selves, but is most evident in the spaces between ourselves and others. Why else would they have an inherently social nature, one has never needed to be patient without some outside force requiring it. The spirit can guide us, giving us an awareness of the space between ourselves and others, showing us ourselves in the relations we have. Those relations are our mirror.
We are the relations we dwell in. Our being, both as individuals and communities will expose itself most strongly in our relations to the other, to memory, to echoes, to breathing in memories, and breathing out wisdom.
Breathe in, absorb your past, Open your eyes, and flooded with the light of awareness, become that which you are called to become.
On the Church, The Individual, and Free Will in Fresh Perspective
On the Church, The Individual, and Free Will in Fresh Perspective
The Will of God: Organic Questions to Static Answers
What is the will of God for my life? Am I following God’s plan for me?
These questions are often the way we think about the will of God in our own lives. We stop to think of a static previously written book, even some Arminians may feel as tough the Lord has called them to a slightly pre-chosen destination for their own lives, that God has written the book or is in the process of writing and needs them to cooperate to the statically set will. We should be conformed to the image of Christ, and we should seek to honor God with our members, but this does not mean that we must have been set on a static one way track that requires of us absolute conformity.
The will of God is not a predetermined essence that requires of us absolute adherence to a book that has been prewritten, but rather, it can be thought of as organic and fluid. How often do we forget that among spiritual gifts are listed, helps and service as well as love. These things are not necessarily predetermined or prewritten essences of us, especially in context of our using such things for the benefit of the church. I think that what the New Testament apostles were doing was not to establish the spiritual gifts for all time in writing, even the ones charismatics tend to forget, such as giving, helps, service, teaching and several others. I think that what was going on is that the New Testament writers saw that people’s natural predispositions were being given over to the spirit for cultivation and this was producing incredible acts of charity, of teaching, of giving, evangelism, compassion and love.
The will of God was and is that the kingdom should come to the earth as it is in heaven, and this is met by us as we become the new humanity in our ability to embrace our dispositions to different things that we enjoy as we turn them over to God.
What I think was going on was the new testament writers observed people being empowered and energized by the spirit to do things that were amazing, but inexplicably natural, such as just giving, may be seen as a natural act of kindness, but they discerned a spiritual power in that giving. They saw in the people a spiritual empowerment unnatural to things as they previously were.
Ultimately the will of God is this, offer your member, faculties, intentions, disciplines, purposes, talents, abilities personality quirks and even tastes to God. By offer, I do not mean sacrifice, but rather, allow them to develop by the spirit into an expression that serves the living God.
There are times when things are necessary and we must necessarily surrender something good for a time so that we can live unto God. But these things are exceptions, not necessarily the rule. We cannot be deceived into thinking that it is more spiritual or more holy to stop doing those things which we love in order to serve God. The will of God is not a book, He is open and willing, and if he has truly given us free will then it is evident in that we can choose to offer up our members to him and they will be empowered by the spirit for the good of all people.
Our lives are commonly preached by our elders and more conservative generations as inconsistent, or incomplete, without stability, to and fro, double minded, sometimes inadequate. I do not believe this to be the case, not at all. I think that rather, we are seeing people become more aware of their loves and trying to empower those loves in service to God. God's plan for our lives is the eventual conformity of us into the image of his son, but if humans were originally created in the image of God, then why the diversity of races, ideas, passions and intellects?
I find that I myself don't often take this into account when thinking about the will of God. Rather than thinking of the conformity to the image of Christ as a cumulative loss of identity, we should think of the trinity, and realize that God is diverse in action but unified in purpose, revealed as the community of three in one.
Cannot the living God do the same in those whom He loves? Cannot then this God diversify our actions but unite us in the spirit. The New Testament gives us glimpses into early church life, and i think what we see is variegated and wholly differing churches and gifts, and services and evangelisms, and ideas, yet all are united by one faith, one hope, one baptism, one Lord, one body, one spirit.
Paul goes on to say that there is one God that unites everything, and is through everything, the everything in everything. This does not preach the gospel of modernism, the contentment with the herd mentality, it does not ask for conformity in our idea of the word, it does not ask us to be another brick in the wall, but another conduit for intuitive and organic work of the spirit to flourish individually, for each according to their members.
We are they who are one in many, many in one, and everything everywhere, we are in the air, we are in the sea, you can feel us in the wind, hear us in the trees, we are the one and the many, we are united in diversity and by our difference we expand through awakening others to their own potential, we are the manifold chorus of symphonic voices reverberating, resonating, everything, everywhere, different, unique, unrepeatable, ineffable, we are the sacred, the holy, the united, we are the arts themselves, creating arts and spreading light, igniting in all a passion for individual expressions of light for unity amidst the diversity of the many, you can feel us in a raindrop and hear us in the roar of the oceans.
Free will serves to allow us to diversify our gifts to God by choice, the more we acquire, the more it is that we can offer, and again not in giving them up, but by inviting them to be empowered by the spirit. So to offer a corrective to myself, the more we acquire and engage in, the more dwellings we can invite the spirit to fill, empower, and enlarge.
Destiny is simply this, that we would invite the spirit of Christ to inhabit our dwellings, our members, our faculties, our intentions passions, habits, creative expressions, careers and concepts. Their being flooded with light is what is truly predestined, for it is the will of God to fill and empower those diverse expressions which are found in ourselves.
This is not to say that everything is up to choice as "the spirit" (we don't always know which spirit it is in some cases) leads.There are necessary events, necessary things that take place as well.
To use a rather limited metaphor, think of the will of god and us in it as the water in a stream or a river. There are stones we will come up against that will alter our paths, and necessarily shift our directions. There are times when God will ask us to surrender that which is good, so that which he desires may be done. There are times when we surrender the good, when God calls us to sacrifice, but there are times when we are free to explore, to develop and to cultivate.
This is the true investment of the talents, to explore and cultivate a variety of interests and use them for the kingdom. The one servant who was given one talent necessarily rejected the need to interact with the world, forgot to take into account a risk of being in the world, but being able to cultivate something out of it.
The parable of the talents to me asks us to cultivate something out of our experiences in the world and to bring back with us, more than we left with. What I mean in short, is that the parable teaches us to want to acquire more, but not at the risk of empty colonization, but rather, through interaction with risk and the possibility of failure, we see that we are empowered to take chances, to explore different avenues of bringing back more to ourselves and to our God than we left with.
Thus free will empowers us to choose our interactions and what we wish to bring back to ourselves, but as we bring things back to ourselves, we invite the spirit to help us choose, or to help us by inhabiting what we have already acquired.
This by no means is an end all, say all, but can be a good starting point for fresh discussions. I hope that this begins to open new doors for fresh insights, in my own life personally, as well as those who would read this.
The Will of God: Organic Questions to Static Answers
What is the will of God for my life? Am I following God’s plan for me?
These questions are often the way we think about the will of God in our own lives. We stop to think of a static previously written book, even some Arminians may feel as tough the Lord has called them to a slightly pre-chosen destination for their own lives, that God has written the book or is in the process of writing and needs them to cooperate to the statically set will. We should be conformed to the image of Christ, and we should seek to honor God with our members, but this does not mean that we must have been set on a static one way track that requires of us absolute conformity.
The will of God is not a predetermined essence that requires of us absolute adherence to a book that has been prewritten, but rather, it can be thought of as organic and fluid. How often do we forget that among spiritual gifts are listed, helps and service as well as love. These things are not necessarily predetermined or prewritten essences of us, especially in context of our using such things for the benefit of the church. I think that what the New Testament apostles were doing was not to establish the spiritual gifts for all time in writing, even the ones charismatics tend to forget, such as giving, helps, service, teaching and several others. I think that what was going on is that the New Testament writers saw that people’s natural predispositions were being given over to the spirit for cultivation and this was producing incredible acts of charity, of teaching, of giving, evangelism, compassion and love.
The will of God was and is that the kingdom should come to the earth as it is in heaven, and this is met by us as we become the new humanity in our ability to embrace our dispositions to different things that we enjoy as we turn them over to God.
What I think was going on was the new testament writers observed people being empowered and energized by the spirit to do things that were amazing, but inexplicably natural, such as just giving, may be seen as a natural act of kindness, but they discerned a spiritual power in that giving. They saw in the people a spiritual empowerment unnatural to things as they previously were.
Ultimately the will of God is this, offer your member, faculties, intentions, disciplines, purposes, talents, abilities personality quirks and even tastes to God. By offer, I do not mean sacrifice, but rather, allow them to develop by the spirit into an expression that serves the living God.
There are times when things are necessary and we must necessarily surrender something good for a time so that we can live unto God. But these things are exceptions, not necessarily the rule. We cannot be deceived into thinking that it is more spiritual or more holy to stop doing those things which we love in order to serve God. The will of God is not a book, He is open and willing, and if he has truly given us free will then it is evident in that we can choose to offer up our members to him and they will be empowered by the spirit for the good of all people.
Our lives are commonly preached by our elders and more conservative generations as inconsistent, or incomplete, without stability, to and fro, double minded, sometimes inadequate. I do not believe this to be the case, not at all. I think that rather, we are seeing people become more aware of their loves and trying to empower those loves in service to God. God's plan for our lives is the eventual conformity of us into the image of his son, but if humans were originally created in the image of God, then why the diversity of races, ideas, passions and intellects?
I find that I myself don't often take this into account when thinking about the will of God. Rather than thinking of the conformity to the image of Christ as a cumulative loss of identity, we should think of the trinity, and realize that God is diverse in action but unified in purpose, revealed as the community of three in one.
Cannot the living God do the same in those whom He loves? Cannot then this God diversify our actions but unite us in the spirit. The New Testament gives us glimpses into early church life, and i think what we see is variegated and wholly differing churches and gifts, and services and evangelisms, and ideas, yet all are united by one faith, one hope, one baptism, one Lord, one body, one spirit.
Paul goes on to say that there is one God that unites everything, and is through everything, the everything in everything. This does not preach the gospel of modernism, the contentment with the herd mentality, it does not ask for conformity in our idea of the word, it does not ask us to be another brick in the wall, but another conduit for intuitive and organic work of the spirit to flourish individually, for each according to their members.
We are they who are one in many, many in one, and everything everywhere, we are in the air, we are in the sea, you can feel us in the wind, hear us in the trees, we are the one and the many, we are united in diversity and by our difference we expand through awakening others to their own potential, we are the manifold chorus of symphonic voices reverberating, resonating, everything, everywhere, different, unique, unrepeatable, ineffable, we are the sacred, the holy, the united, we are the arts themselves, creating arts and spreading light, igniting in all a passion for individual expressions of light for unity amidst the diversity of the many, you can feel us in a raindrop and hear us in the roar of the oceans.
Free will serves to allow us to diversify our gifts to God by choice, the more we acquire, the more it is that we can offer, and again not in giving them up, but by inviting them to be empowered by the spirit. So to offer a corrective to myself, the more we acquire and engage in, the more dwellings we can invite the spirit to fill, empower, and enlarge.
Destiny is simply this, that we would invite the spirit of Christ to inhabit our dwellings, our members, our faculties, our intentions passions, habits, creative expressions, careers and concepts. Their being flooded with light is what is truly predestined, for it is the will of God to fill and empower those diverse expressions which are found in ourselves.
This is not to say that everything is up to choice as "the spirit" (we don't always know which spirit it is in some cases) leads.There are necessary events, necessary things that take place as well.
To use a rather limited metaphor, think of the will of god and us in it as the water in a stream or a river. There are stones we will come up against that will alter our paths, and necessarily shift our directions. There are times when God will ask us to surrender that which is good, so that which he desires may be done. There are times when we surrender the good, when God calls us to sacrifice, but there are times when we are free to explore, to develop and to cultivate.
This is the true investment of the talents, to explore and cultivate a variety of interests and use them for the kingdom. The one servant who was given one talent necessarily rejected the need to interact with the world, forgot to take into account a risk of being in the world, but being able to cultivate something out of it.
The parable of the talents to me asks us to cultivate something out of our experiences in the world and to bring back with us, more than we left with. What I mean in short, is that the parable teaches us to want to acquire more, but not at the risk of empty colonization, but rather, through interaction with risk and the possibility of failure, we see that we are empowered to take chances, to explore different avenues of bringing back more to ourselves and to our God than we left with.
Thus free will empowers us to choose our interactions and what we wish to bring back to ourselves, but as we bring things back to ourselves, we invite the spirit to help us choose, or to help us by inhabiting what we have already acquired.
This by no means is an end all, say all, but can be a good starting point for fresh discussions. I hope that this begins to open new doors for fresh insights, in my own life personally, as well as those who would read this.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Memory: Echoes and Breathing
Well, this is a new blog and it is time I began saying what I really think and feel somewhere.
In Echoes Breathe: It's not just a catchy title, although it is quite catchy if I do say so myself. It's a philosophy of memory, an interpretation of life. In echoes, we find that which has been spoken reverberating, resonating sound occurs throughout our being drinking in memories as sunlight. In echoes we hear voices past, things forgotten, vanities and conceits fulfilled, nymphs betrayed, and stories told. We all have echoes, we all leave echoes, our touch, our actions spreading outward in an arc from us to others in an unpredictably consequential ripples of causality. Echoes remind us we are not alone, they tell us stories from the past, things forgotten, ripples we have caused to spread across space and time and lives like a chain reaction, like breathing.
In the face of memory, we breathe in the stories, absorb our pasts and remember together, we are faced with the echoes that ripple across our flesh and minds. The love of another, the chaos of betrayal and deception, the power of self sacrificing love. In the face of memory we all breathe in something beyond ourselves, echoes imply space, a cavernous abode wherein we can remember the sands of our past, and dwell in the hot moonlit night of the present, remember the drums and fires that have echoes in our genes. We are the accumulation of memories from those who have gone before, our genes, testaments of someone's life story for ages past and ages to come.
In echoes, we breathe. In the face of memory we are sustained. One cannot accomplish life alone, that is measureless folly and the hope of pure abandon of the other. Memory teaches us to remember the Other. To set before our awareness that holy togetherness which we all share in. In echoes, we carry on the traditions of the past, and listen to the voices of the generations before us. In echoes we hear dark tales of evil happenings, whispers that some should seek to have forgotten, as well as memories of heroes and legends from before. These that have gone before unite us, they provide our breath in that we can look to them for the guidance we need in the life that we now live.
Memory is more important than failure, more important that success. Without memory we shall soon forget even ourselves. Memory gives us solidarity, reminds us that we have all been present, in times past, in the events of our ancestors. Memory teaches us that the accomplishments of the one, find their life in the acceptance of those facts by the many. Memory reminds us that we are not alone, not in relation to ourselves nor to God, who has forsworn never to leave us.
There is a God in heaven who looks upon us and asks us to remember. Forget Me not, he says. Because it is in memory that we can relate to God, that we can hold before ourselves graces in times past and hold hope for the future.
As we listen to those echoes of the past, flooding our pores with light and awareness, let us enter that sacred communion which comes in the breathing in of memories, in absorbing them into ourselves and exhaling out their worth. In echoes, find your past, and breathe, fully aware of who you have been and where you may be going.
In Echoes Breathe
In Echoes Breathe: It's not just a catchy title, although it is quite catchy if I do say so myself. It's a philosophy of memory, an interpretation of life. In echoes, we find that which has been spoken reverberating, resonating sound occurs throughout our being drinking in memories as sunlight. In echoes we hear voices past, things forgotten, vanities and conceits fulfilled, nymphs betrayed, and stories told. We all have echoes, we all leave echoes, our touch, our actions spreading outward in an arc from us to others in an unpredictably consequential ripples of causality. Echoes remind us we are not alone, they tell us stories from the past, things forgotten, ripples we have caused to spread across space and time and lives like a chain reaction, like breathing.
In the face of memory, we breathe in the stories, absorb our pasts and remember together, we are faced with the echoes that ripple across our flesh and minds. The love of another, the chaos of betrayal and deception, the power of self sacrificing love. In the face of memory we all breathe in something beyond ourselves, echoes imply space, a cavernous abode wherein we can remember the sands of our past, and dwell in the hot moonlit night of the present, remember the drums and fires that have echoes in our genes. We are the accumulation of memories from those who have gone before, our genes, testaments of someone's life story for ages past and ages to come.
In echoes, we breathe. In the face of memory we are sustained. One cannot accomplish life alone, that is measureless folly and the hope of pure abandon of the other. Memory teaches us to remember the Other. To set before our awareness that holy togetherness which we all share in. In echoes, we carry on the traditions of the past, and listen to the voices of the generations before us. In echoes we hear dark tales of evil happenings, whispers that some should seek to have forgotten, as well as memories of heroes and legends from before. These that have gone before unite us, they provide our breath in that we can look to them for the guidance we need in the life that we now live.
Memory is more important than failure, more important that success. Without memory we shall soon forget even ourselves. Memory gives us solidarity, reminds us that we have all been present, in times past, in the events of our ancestors. Memory teaches us that the accomplishments of the one, find their life in the acceptance of those facts by the many. Memory reminds us that we are not alone, not in relation to ourselves nor to God, who has forsworn never to leave us.
There is a God in heaven who looks upon us and asks us to remember. Forget Me not, he says. Because it is in memory that we can relate to God, that we can hold before ourselves graces in times past and hold hope for the future.
As we listen to those echoes of the past, flooding our pores with light and awareness, let us enter that sacred communion which comes in the breathing in of memories, in absorbing them into ourselves and exhaling out their worth. In echoes, find your past, and breathe, fully aware of who you have been and where you may be going.
In Echoes Breathe
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