She danced in the dark last night,
raised me to the height of my

feet shuffling against the kitchen floor

and what light could hide behind the midnight

laughs of knowing?

showing
what uncomprehended Word

that walked in, took my hands
and placed them around her back, dancing
and placed them on her moving skin
and placed them on the midnight light

of my feet shuffling, and her laughs of knowing, and what the world could not comprehend

My pastor today explained the entire history of our church from start to present. All the stories were great, incredible even but there was nothing like what he said about the present.

This was my last Sunday here for a while as my wife and I are moving next week. I've been around my church for about 5 years, off and on. My history with it has been a sea of storms, ranging from bitterness, cynicism, flat out pissed-off, feeling condemned, feeling worthless, feeling burned, worn out, hating its frivolous culture, to loving people's idiosyncrasies, being refreshed, feeling more love from people than I have ever known, feeling the presence of God in tears, in tears knowing that I am loved, convicted and wanting to love more. I grew tired of trying to live up to the swaying in my mind, the blistering ache in my heart that told me I shouldn't hate, but I couldn't help myself, tired of faking passion, tired of emotion in general, tired of feeling bullied into spirituality and I said to hell with it and spent about a year and a half in the dark room of myself; a created cavern of isolation disguised as sterile solitude. But there was nothing sterile about the infectious presence of existential anxiety every night alone in my room (if I wasn't having a blast getting high). And anxieties of exitense it was because I found myself not questioning the authority of my cell group leader, but questioning the power I held in my hands to end the anxiety and finally be with Him. I was obsessed with the possibility I saw clearly in my mind; a closed curtain right behind the cocked barrel of a shotgun in my mouth.

Years have passed since then, and as my pastor came to the present words of God that have been spoken over our fellowship after all the super-spiritual highs of obedience, miracles, and rejoicing, I wept:

"Do not forget your first love"

In the present, in front of hundreds of new faces and hundreds of family faces my pastor repented and confessed that he had forgotten his first love. My pastor who has honestly said some of the most offensive things to me, some of the most convicting, some of the most loving and some of the most challenging. My pastor whom I have seen for years as a person desperately in love with Jesus, one of the most I have ever known, here, now after a history of fleeing from his words repents to me.

I wept because I would be leaving him and these people once again, not running from them, but running after God and following the voice of Jesus, and just as the treasure was so brokenly shown to me I must turn and walk into the wind that strips me naked, vurnerable before the God of the desert, the God who wants to show me who I truly am, the God who will speak to the curtain behind the gun barrel and with tears scream, "Come out!" The curtain will open, and I will not speak of who I will find there. He is not the I of my existence. He is not the one walking still with the dust of aloneness hanging upon the emptiness, the delusion, the straddling of ideas, the anxiety. This one has already seen the end of the barrel. This one has already been crucified.

Gaza City Invaded

The endless fight goes on, but this time with an all out invasion and 22 Palestinians killed over 1 Isreali soldier. One act with centuries of history to back it up; with an ancient trail of passions that, honestly, I don't know much about.

My Christian pysche tells me that I should back Isreal up with all my heart, and I really want to, but my conscience (along with my ignorance) will only let me go so far.

Who is the oppresed and who is the oppresor? Injustices have been inflicted upon both sides with equal brutality...am I right?

As I sift through the words of the prophet Isaiah, the central theme all over the page is exile, then restoration. Are these words playing a part in the battle that rages across the world as I type in my air conditioned house in suburban America? I read the ancient Scriptures about the destruction of the Isreali State and it just so happens that since then, in the very century in which I have been born, the Diaspora is reconciled and Isreal's State forms again, of course causing another exile - that of the Arabs in the land. This has happened in the century of War, the century of the machine, the century of propaganda, the nuclear century where more destruction of the human race is possible than ever before in history.

I do not pretend to know much about this and I am certainly no scholar, but I only come with questions.

As a Christian I have never truely dug deep in the historic Old Testament. The works of the prophets were books filled with the prophesies of Jesus and reassurances of his Messianic calling. I hadn't ever truely read these books and surely not with a mind open to understand what was happening historically. Now, of course, I'm older, and the prophet's voice of what I read in my peaceful quiet time rings like a war siren in my head as I scan the BBC articles.

No, this is not something to understand by reading a single Wikipedia article, but I can understand injustice and grieve over it. Even if I'm ignorant. Sometimes things are hidden from the "wise and prudent."

All that to say, I hope to be very wise and prudent in the affairs of my world, especially in the affairs of the chosen people of God, whether I like what they do or not. I am a branch, grafted in to drink from the nourishment of the olive tree...I pray I am not arrogant, nor ignorant.

All the more I wait for the Prince of Peace to establish his kingdom on the earth, to let the new Jerusalem be delivered as a bride adorned for her husband. All the more his coming is near, and this is my faith and this may be the only end for peace in that region; for peace anywhere, our hearts included.

For out of the heart comes so much deceit and who knows what we are capable of doing reacting out of the insecurities, lies, frustrations of our wounded and unhealed hearts. Even if innocent blood is on the hands of Isrealis and Palestinians both, it is on this American's also...who will heal us from this condition?

Whether we say yes in this age, or in the age to come it is Jesus Christ our Lord.

"Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the Lord?"

Isaiah 42: 16 & 19

The "real world" flashes before me in all of its deceit. I see so much. What is it that drives its anxieties into our heads like brain surgery, a mad surgeon content on one thing: hopeless confusion.

And here is what passes within us to "be what we were suspossed to be," here is all that we think we are, concluding into one passive passion, one not fully conscious, one filled with the stuff of everydayness; here is what the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber called the It-world.

And when it passes before us we have a hard time distinguishing it from the You-world; the world of encounter; the world of true persons encountering each other. I will not say that this is the only place of reality because the It-world is a part of our lives, but let us not confuse one for the other.

The modern machine has become our friend, not our tool. This is confusion. This is the place where true persons become a mass of resource; souls become shovels to break up the ground for no seed, but for more mechinization, seeds require waiting.

And who will be blind enough to see? And who will listen like the deaf? In one of Jesus's parables, these were called in for the Great Banquet because those originally invited had things to take care of, houses to attend to, payments to be payed for, the "real world" to look after. So the lame, the crippled, the blind were called (Luke 14).

There is a world that tempts me to brush over the invitation with a wave of my hand and hurry off away from the "fanatics." It is a world I must enter into, but how will I be lame enough, desperate enough to blindly accept this invitation when it comes to me on my way to such important meetings, such busy details, such crucial worries? Will I fail enough to be lying on the street, begging for food when it comes? Will I fail this world? Will I be hungry when it comes?

May hunger, may lameness, may blindness, may crippledness, may desperation truely be my yes.

It is in the arms of Abba where we can truely know our condition. For the love of Jesus is what brings healing to our wounds. May we not forget where the Lord found us, and where we wait eagerly for the glory we hope for.

"We think we know what we ought to be doing, and we see ourselves move with the inexplorable deliberation of a machine that has gone wrong, to do the opposite. A most absorbing phenomenon which we cannot stop and perhaps deploring! But it goes on. And as Christ said over Jerusalem, we do not know the things that are for our peace."

-from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton

As I sit in a coffee shop, reading the words of the prophet Isaiah, I can't help but let it get under my skin. Desperately crying out, roaming around for years totally naked, exiled, crying out to the people of God to not rely on strong armies and the strength of Egypt, everyday this man was ravished for one thing: the word of God. The more I sip my Toffee Nut Latte, the more I feel absolutely oblivious.

"He humbles those who dwell on high,
he lays the lofty city low;
he levels it to the ground
and casts it down to the dust.
Feet trample it down-
the feet of the oppressed,
the footsteps of the poor."

Delusion is a scary beast. Its very strength lies in its ability to deceive, but more so, to deceive with the mask of righteousness. In the race of modernity the world flashes before us in instants of technological progress, forcing our minds to keep up, forcing us with its instant comfort, scaring us to death of not being comfortable, filling us with anxiety if our comfort is different than the rest. Before we know it, what have we trampled upon to asert this membership of society? There is no time for reflection, no time to ask, no time to understand what happens to me as I whore myself to my work, my degree, my certificate for only a resume and a pat on the back. And all of this of coures is for the good of yourself: so that you can uphold whatever little you hold in your hands now.

Do we know that it will burn? In our nakedness, have we sought the word of the Lord, or have we forsaken the words: "what is first will be last and what is last will be first?"

I have known too many people walking down whatever road they walk down for the single purpose to ease one anxiety about their life. It truely saddens me, although I can completley undertand how we are controled by such fear. (There is more at work here than I can say, and I know that I am speaking of a very large generality.) But I know the feeling of being caught up in the spirit of this world. Before you know it, your nakedness is a foriegn thought to you. Your weakness is written off with, "I'm not really like that," "I'll be better once I finish this thing I'm working on," "I just need to suck it up." We adhere to the words of Merton: "...we do not know the things that are for our peace." We cover up our anxiety with more and more things to do, more and more keeping up with the modern race, and we never strip ourselves naked before the Holy One of Isreal. Before we know it, the false gods cosume our lives and the thought of denying the help of the strong Egypt and surrendering everything to the unseen God of the promises of Abraham fills us with anxiety. The entire point was to have the opposite effect.

What has given us temporal confidence will be taken down. I want to agree with the prophet (although I myself may take offense at his words) the day of the Lord is near when all delusion will be uncovered and all of us will be naked, just as he made himself. For God longs for us to throw away our covenants with death and to embrace Him only as He has forever been in the posture for an embrace, even in all of our filth, if we would just turn to Him.

Thoughts?