*
No, not yet. September has come and gone and I am far from healed, far from being a Christian. As the month on the calendar changed, the ridiculous knight rode through all the brittle leaves on the sidewalk, the emblem of October. On the corners children gathered and began to prepare for the coming day of pagan fear and family closeness on the last day of the month. But it couldn't really be October, could it be? Could time be moving so fast? The calendars and chronometers didn't lie -- but in a way they did. They would run down like thermodynamic laws, they went in only one direction, which was that of the knight's and everyone's dissolution. But he was riding in the other direction, against biology and physics really, not against in any conceptual sense but in a ride more fundamental than that -- just the other direction, against whatever flow they made. So as he moved into middle age, into withering and death, he felt a strength and even a dim glowing of light up ahead, if he only could figure out -- just how to move into the place where it was.
Horses grazed and humans rested, only it wasn't really resting. It was resting that was full of tension and needed another name. In twilight the anchoress prayed and let all the poor people through her gate. You had to assume that she knew which direction one was supposed to go. She looked like Elise. Otherwise he would have run away.
So Dave lay down and dreamed his usual irrational nightdreams, knowing that the devil would be sure to use them to try to ruin him - but knowing also that God was in there too, hidden within the burning yellow images and crackling October leaves.
*
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Prayer as a Wave
*
The prayerful kneading is like a piece of death because you don’t know where it’s going to take you and you have absolutely no say. Nor could you nor should you.
*
So what more to say of the kneading except that it is full of terror? Is that why people don’t go to this wonderful place? Is this why we avoid intimacy with our God? The immersion – in God – is like body surfing within the megawaves, the ones that hold you down forever and rub your nose in sand. Your mouth, your shoulders, slide in the strong feel of reality, the sweetness in the core of turbulence. Can you survive this power? And you stand up stupefied in the water, look behind you and see an even bigger wave coming up. And then you pray to God that God’s own wave won’t kill you. And the kneading begins again.
*
PRAYER AS ACTION
So that for you the realm known as providence waits on the other side of prayer, can only be found there, and you must ride, or be carried, through your own annihilation to get there. Captives go free but first are captives. A true prayer must be a kind of action, a form of change, a behavior that leaves you changed. The verb in the prayer is the oar that rows you closer – yes but closer? closer to where? Closer to where the prayer itself is going. You cannot say that place before you are there. And words fail you when you are there.
*
PRAYER AS THE EAR CHEWING WHAT IT HEARS
Therefore, for you, ugly Dave, listening to reality’s word became a most active passivity. The ear moved and changed within the word it heard. And this was not only like chewing food but also like being chewed by one’s food.
*
A PEACE INSIDE THE ROAR
Prayer was the peace in the midst of the roar. It was perhaps found nowhere else. There was no other access road. In prayerspace all people of faith gathered together. The rest of the world was there too but with a different look a different feel. A different slant of light fell on all things and made a different kind of shadow. Things were softened and loosened. That was because they were now prayed for.
*
PRAYER AS TEMPORARY OR TEMPORAL
One of the requirements for being here was that you had to step back out again. God was going to pull you like dough back into the world. You didn’t want to go.... but on the other hand, it was God’s world to which you were called or called back.
*
The prayerful kneading is like a piece of death because you don’t know where it’s going to take you and you have absolutely no say. Nor could you nor should you.
*
So what more to say of the kneading except that it is full of terror? Is that why people don’t go to this wonderful place? Is this why we avoid intimacy with our God? The immersion – in God – is like body surfing within the megawaves, the ones that hold you down forever and rub your nose in sand. Your mouth, your shoulders, slide in the strong feel of reality, the sweetness in the core of turbulence. Can you survive this power? And you stand up stupefied in the water, look behind you and see an even bigger wave coming up. And then you pray to God that God’s own wave won’t kill you. And the kneading begins again.
*
PRAYER AS ACTION
So that for you the realm known as providence waits on the other side of prayer, can only be found there, and you must ride, or be carried, through your own annihilation to get there. Captives go free but first are captives. A true prayer must be a kind of action, a form of change, a behavior that leaves you changed. The verb in the prayer is the oar that rows you closer – yes but closer? closer to where? Closer to where the prayer itself is going. You cannot say that place before you are there. And words fail you when you are there.
*
PRAYER AS THE EAR CHEWING WHAT IT HEARS
Therefore, for you, ugly Dave, listening to reality’s word became a most active passivity. The ear moved and changed within the word it heard. And this was not only like chewing food but also like being chewed by one’s food.
*
A PEACE INSIDE THE ROAR
Prayer was the peace in the midst of the roar. It was perhaps found nowhere else. There was no other access road. In prayerspace all people of faith gathered together. The rest of the world was there too but with a different look a different feel. A different slant of light fell on all things and made a different kind of shadow. Things were softened and loosened. That was because they were now prayed for.
*
PRAYER AS TEMPORARY OR TEMPORAL
One of the requirements for being here was that you had to step back out again. God was going to pull you like dough back into the world. You didn’t want to go.... but on the other hand, it was God’s world to which you were called or called back.
*
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Story: The Ridiculous Knight (Part 1)
*
All faith reflections stopped abruptly on the avenue where Don lived, or used to live. A black cat walked up to Elise and rubbed her calf. The cat was emaciated. No, I can't believe it. This is Don's cat, Elise said. he's letting her starve to death. This is impossible. I can't be seeing this but I am.
How could he ever be such a brute?
She looked at Dave in a state of melting bewilderment, even her features were moving. Indeed he had never before seen her not in control. It was horrible. He would never have been able to say, before it happened, how unnerving it was to see this woman in distress.
You could say that seeing Elise in a helpless state put him in the same state -- or worse. After all, she was one of his pins, one of the people who kept him pinned and upright. She led the study of scriptures, she discerned things correctly, she spent all her time helping the poor and sorrowful, she knew how to pray without making other people's flesh crawl, she was always always calm. He depended on her to be dependable, always. Seeing her in distress made him come undone. It was as though every 911 phone in the universe was ringing at once.
Here, give her to me, he said. I'll go feed her, he said. (Referring awkwardly to the little cat.)
Yes, but where is Don? Elise asked. What has happened to Don?
*
When Dave came back from the convenience store (carrying a round bundle that wanted to get back onto the ground), he found Elise talking to a stranger. She seemed worse than before, more disturbed if possible, and Dave's heart began having -- what was this? Were these palpitations? He did not love her. What he felt for her was a whole lot worse (that is, better) than love.
Elise, calm down. Elise, please. got is still h ere.
The stranger, probably the landlord, was saying: He just disappeared, lady.
I can tell you, miss, it bothers me considerably not having him around.
He was my best tenant.
*
When he saw Elise crying, Dave turned *instantly* into the Knight of Courage and Sorrow, a knight out of Spenser or Don Quixote, a ridiculous role for an ex-con, a former criminal, an all-around terrible Christian, such as this worm called himself, but by the time he had ascertained this obvious fact, the armor was already all but buckled on. Never fear. I'll find him, ma'am. This I promise. The little kitten, Tinker Bell, curled around Dave's ankle. This man Don was missing and needed to be found.
TO BE CONTINUED
*
All faith reflections stopped abruptly on the avenue where Don lived, or used to live. A black cat walked up to Elise and rubbed her calf. The cat was emaciated. No, I can't believe it. This is Don's cat, Elise said. he's letting her starve to death. This is impossible. I can't be seeing this but I am.
How could he ever be such a brute?
She looked at Dave in a state of melting bewilderment, even her features were moving. Indeed he had never before seen her not in control. It was horrible. He would never have been able to say, before it happened, how unnerving it was to see this woman in distress.
You could say that seeing Elise in a helpless state put him in the same state -- or worse. After all, she was one of his pins, one of the people who kept him pinned and upright. She led the study of scriptures, she discerned things correctly, she spent all her time helping the poor and sorrowful, she knew how to pray without making other people's flesh crawl, she was always always calm. He depended on her to be dependable, always. Seeing her in distress made him come undone. It was as though every 911 phone in the universe was ringing at once.
Here, give her to me, he said. I'll go feed her, he said. (Referring awkwardly to the little cat.)
Yes, but where is Don? Elise asked. What has happened to Don?
*
When Dave came back from the convenience store (carrying a round bundle that wanted to get back onto the ground), he found Elise talking to a stranger. She seemed worse than before, more disturbed if possible, and Dave's heart began having -- what was this? Were these palpitations? He did not love her. What he felt for her was a whole lot worse (that is, better) than love.
Elise, calm down. Elise, please. got is still h ere.
The stranger, probably the landlord, was saying: He just disappeared, lady.
I can tell you, miss, it bothers me considerably not having him around.
He was my best tenant.
*
When he saw Elise crying, Dave turned *instantly* into the Knight of Courage and Sorrow, a knight out of Spenser or Don Quixote, a ridiculous role for an ex-con, a former criminal, an all-around terrible Christian, such as this worm called himself, but by the time he had ascertained this obvious fact, the armor was already all but buckled on. Never fear. I'll find him, ma'am. This I promise. The little kitten, Tinker Bell, curled around Dave's ankle. This man Don was missing and needed to be found.
TO BE CONTINUED
*
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The Bent Witness and In the Darkness with a Candle
*
I cannot evangelize you, my sweet Lord, because I am broken. When an advertisement appears on TV, the models are always young and strong and beautiful. They are not allowed to sell a product unless they appear to be sound.
But I am bent over inside and my soul, considered in itself, is not a pretty sight. How can I “sell” you, my sweet one, when I myself am so ugly?
Now it is true that you hate advertising and therefore want me to witness in a different way.
But don’t I need to be healed first? Doesn’t my body need to witness what you can do? Doesn’t your power need to be seen in me?
Or is it that this breaking of me, this humiliation and the way I am knocked to the ground, is it that this is the witness of your love and your wisdom?
*
IN THE DARKNESS WITH A CANDLE
*
Here is how the kneading of Dave's relation with the Lord would act itself out in reality. To begin with, he found deepest intimacy with God only when he was alone, in a room without windows. In the darkness with a candle. Withdrawn from all women and men. In solitude so deep that it was beneath any loneliness. Yes but in the solitude what did he find? What it contained was the command to go into the community.
But you couldn’t *be* in community without going through here first. Community only existed on the far side of your withdrawal into God.
*
I cannot evangelize you, my sweet Lord, because I am broken. When an advertisement appears on TV, the models are always young and strong and beautiful. They are not allowed to sell a product unless they appear to be sound.
But I am bent over inside and my soul, considered in itself, is not a pretty sight. How can I “sell” you, my sweet one, when I myself am so ugly?
Now it is true that you hate advertising and therefore want me to witness in a different way.
But don’t I need to be healed first? Doesn’t my body need to witness what you can do? Doesn’t your power need to be seen in me?
Or is it that this breaking of me, this humiliation and the way I am knocked to the ground, is it that this is the witness of your love and your wisdom?
*
IN THE DARKNESS WITH A CANDLE
*
Here is how the kneading of Dave's relation with the Lord would act itself out in reality. To begin with, he found deepest intimacy with God only when he was alone, in a room without windows. In the darkness with a candle. Withdrawn from all women and men. In solitude so deep that it was beneath any loneliness. Yes but in the solitude what did he find? What it contained was the command to go into the community.
But you couldn’t *be* in community without going through here first. Community only existed on the far side of your withdrawal into God.
*
Friday, September 17, 2004
Story: The blessed treadmill
*
Dave's movement through time was endless kneading, as he backed away from the world (or maybe from his own sleazy impulses to rob that world for his own benefit), as he backed into God's hands, which shaped and were warm sides of prayerspace. Alone in prayerspace, the ex-con would beg God to change his heart. Then God would knead his heart like the stiff dough that it was. The man would emerge from God's hands renewed, re-energized, and find himself in a new place, one that prayer itself had opened.
There it was possible to breathe and exist (and even hold down a job) for a few minutes or days, until his impulses (only they weren't truly his) took control again and he was forced to call out to God: take me back into your hands! Then the kneading began again.
It was not a way of life in which you could make plans, build a career, do the things other people did. Dave lived from moment to moment, except that the units of this life were not really temporal "moments". The rule that measured them was God's, of God. God measured out the units of one's comings and goings. Secular life felt like little more than a slide show in the front of the auditorium, while one's real life was a whispering in the back of the room.
*
When he began to imagine that he was all right -- whenever he stopped the routine of prayer -- then the bad things happened. Prostitutes would come up to him in his car to ogle his tattoos. Passersby made outlandish offers in the local park. And his eyes would start to measure the swelling of a stranger's wallet, the ugly bulge of credit cards. Avert thine eyes! The purses of the women at church would practically caress his fingers. He stayed clean, he stayed clean. But casual acquaintances found his fervent piety to be disquieting. You're going to go nuts without some more diversion, his sister told him. You can't just pray all day. It isn't right, it isn't healthy.
*
Yes but you could see the temptations only came when he was off prayer duty. It was as though the world could sense when he was susceptible and weak. So he had no choice. He was bound like a slave to his own begging.
*
Dreams struck him in his foolish tender parts. He dreamed he was stealing his own church blind, taking crisp bills that were secreted (such is our dream security) in the white paunch of a teddy bear. You took a bill and the bear sang to you. The bear watched his own being despoiled and made no other comment. His sadness was the only witness. During stormy nights, robbers would tear themselves off crosses to shake their fingers at him. Morning dawned at the church picnic as the parish's poorest child, who was somehow also Dave, was cruelly singled out and given Rupert for a prize. Where is the bear's stomach? the child wailed. For the poor creature had nothing but a hole in his belly. All his assets had been stolen!
Dave, you have robbed our children, one of the matrons cried. Of course, her voice was really his voice when he woke up.
In the morning he read psalms with desperation. "Must I then return what I never stole?" But once a thief -- well, no matter what, you always will still feel like one. God pardons you, yes but as a thief and it is as a thief that you receive the pardon. You are innocent but you retain your identity, whatever you still have. Because the self God had laid his hand upon was this one and not some imaginary other.
So each morning Dave climbed back onto the blessed treadmill of prayer. And the kneading of salvation rebegan. And he was very glad.
*
Dave's movement through time was endless kneading, as he backed away from the world (or maybe from his own sleazy impulses to rob that world for his own benefit), as he backed into God's hands, which shaped and were warm sides of prayerspace. Alone in prayerspace, the ex-con would beg God to change his heart. Then God would knead his heart like the stiff dough that it was. The man would emerge from God's hands renewed, re-energized, and find himself in a new place, one that prayer itself had opened.
There it was possible to breathe and exist (and even hold down a job) for a few minutes or days, until his impulses (only they weren't truly his) took control again and he was forced to call out to God: take me back into your hands! Then the kneading began again.
It was not a way of life in which you could make plans, build a career, do the things other people did. Dave lived from moment to moment, except that the units of this life were not really temporal "moments". The rule that measured them was God's, of God. God measured out the units of one's comings and goings. Secular life felt like little more than a slide show in the front of the auditorium, while one's real life was a whispering in the back of the room.
*
When he began to imagine that he was all right -- whenever he stopped the routine of prayer -- then the bad things happened. Prostitutes would come up to him in his car to ogle his tattoos. Passersby made outlandish offers in the local park. And his eyes would start to measure the swelling of a stranger's wallet, the ugly bulge of credit cards. Avert thine eyes! The purses of the women at church would practically caress his fingers. He stayed clean, he stayed clean. But casual acquaintances found his fervent piety to be disquieting. You're going to go nuts without some more diversion, his sister told him. You can't just pray all day. It isn't right, it isn't healthy.
*
Yes but you could see the temptations only came when he was off prayer duty. It was as though the world could sense when he was susceptible and weak. So he had no choice. He was bound like a slave to his own begging.
*
Dreams struck him in his foolish tender parts. He dreamed he was stealing his own church blind, taking crisp bills that were secreted (such is our dream security) in the white paunch of a teddy bear. You took a bill and the bear sang to you. The bear watched his own being despoiled and made no other comment. His sadness was the only witness. During stormy nights, robbers would tear themselves off crosses to shake their fingers at him. Morning dawned at the church picnic as the parish's poorest child, who was somehow also Dave, was cruelly singled out and given Rupert for a prize. Where is the bear's stomach? the child wailed. For the poor creature had nothing but a hole in his belly. All his assets had been stolen!
Dave, you have robbed our children, one of the matrons cried. Of course, her voice was really his voice when he woke up.
In the morning he read psalms with desperation. "Must I then return what I never stole?" But once a thief -- well, no matter what, you always will still feel like one. God pardons you, yes but as a thief and it is as a thief that you receive the pardon. You are innocent but you retain your identity, whatever you still have. Because the self God had laid his hand upon was this one and not some imaginary other.
So each morning Dave climbed back onto the blessed treadmill of prayer. And the kneading of salvation rebegan. And he was very glad.
*
Friday, September 10, 2004
Interlude: The circle
*
I believe my little dog has a language of his own, powerful and expressive and full of redundancies that I enjoy.
When he is hungry and knows I am moving to the bucket of kibbles -- or maybe I am about to pull like a band-aid the plastic lid off the dogfood can using my magical powers to produce the wonder of *food* -- and all the time he knows absolutely that this is going to happen -- all during this time he runs in little circles on the rug and the kitchen tiles. These circles are a language. I read them with great ease. They express an idea and transmit it to me, and I am in no doubt whatsoever what the transmission is about. I know what my doggie is saying.
Sometimes I may misunderstand the words of an actor on television. But I never ever misunderstand the words used by my dog.
Each circle is perfect and elegant. It is like the loop underneath a "g", ornate, almost baroque. The excessive nature of the loop, its extravagance, is part of what it communicates. Dachshund language is anything but ambiguous.
And I hurry to the bucket, no doubt making a loop of my own that he in turn perfectly understands. Bless the little lad.
*
I believe my little dog has a language of his own, powerful and expressive and full of redundancies that I enjoy.
When he is hungry and knows I am moving to the bucket of kibbles -- or maybe I am about to pull like a band-aid the plastic lid off the dogfood can using my magical powers to produce the wonder of *food* -- and all the time he knows absolutely that this is going to happen -- all during this time he runs in little circles on the rug and the kitchen tiles. These circles are a language. I read them with great ease. They express an idea and transmit it to me, and I am in no doubt whatsoever what the transmission is about. I know what my doggie is saying.
Sometimes I may misunderstand the words of an actor on television. But I never ever misunderstand the words used by my dog.
Each circle is perfect and elegant. It is like the loop underneath a "g", ornate, almost baroque. The excessive nature of the loop, its extravagance, is part of what it communicates. Dachshund language is anything but ambiguous.
And I hurry to the bucket, no doubt making a loop of my own that he in turn perfectly understands. Bless the little lad.
*
Story: The house church and the parable of the "bad" Christian (Part 2)
*
THE PARABLE OF THE "BAD" CHRISTIAN
As Elise told it, there was a church in a downtown area that was losing parishioners and needed restoring. Some people say it was a megachurch in the suburbs that had lost its charismatic pastor and was now suffering budget shortfalls. Others say it was in the middle of a city from which all the wealthy people had fled. In any case it was a church that people pitied or criticized more than they respected. And the more energetic members felt it needed a lot of work.
There was a "bad" Christian who belonged to this church. Well, no doubt there was more than one, but in this parable there only needs to be one. The trouble with this "bad" Christian was that people didn't find her interesting or useful. She wasn't good looking or young. She wasn't eloquent. For some reason, she did not socialize well with other members -- when she tried she was always a bit awkward. Her jokes were too hectic. Whenever she was asked to a house she wasn't asked back. There was no deep fault anyone could identify, just a sense of someone whose clumsiness seemed out of step with the grace and beauty that was still a cherished part of the worship service. She simply didn't fit in.
The "bad" Christian could easily have volunteered to perform some chore that others appreciated. She could have picked up the loose bulletins after the service. She could have tried to greet newcomers. She might have brought some cookies to hospitality. Nothing stopped her from giving a ride to a senior citizen. Something, anything. She could have tried to be "good".
But all she did was to come week after week. And though her spiritual aura was drab and uninspiring, you couldn't deny that she came. She apparently found something in the church that nourished her. So she was a "bad" Christian but a Christian all the same. You couldn't really say otherwise
The better Christians grew more and more frustrated and dissatisfied with their church, and some of them even stopped going. They took a sabbatical or began shopping around. Others just moved away. What do we do about this sorry place? the leaders asked. They would quote the old Ladies Home Journal cover: Can this marriage be saved? Then they would laugh self-consciously, uneasily. Because a church really was like a marriage -- changing a church was like undergoing a divorce. So you tried to stay as long as you could.
And the better Christians -- the ones that didn't move away -- prayed over their uneasiness, sought discernment, hesitated to make a move. But finally some of them decided to secede and form a house church. We will not compromise, we will not spend all our time on asking for money, we won't focus on building a building instead of serving our sisters and brothers, we will be a true church. We will be new. We will be available to the community as this sorrowful place no longer is.
What in the world is a house church? asked the "bad" Christian. She had never heard about this.
And being the person she was she didn't understand what it was when they told her. She didn't get the point.
So she was left behind. And the house church went on to have some experiences that were as filled with the very spirit they had worried was lost. There was movement in the hearts of members and movement in the community surrounding them. What they'd done was in general a good thing.
Yes it was, but there was the "bad" Christian sitting in the church they'd left. Soon that church sank even further and further without their inspiration and finally began experiencing perpetual budget crises, the scary kind that lead people to wonder whether it isn't just time to close down. Perhaps everyone should move on to a house church. But there was always the "bad" Christian who didn't understand house churches, didn't get the emerging stuff that was happening, always seemed a step or two behind whatever was new and interesting. There was the Christian left behind.
If people had decided to take her church away from her, it was because the church wasn't interesting and neither was she. But if that meant removing the wafer from her mouth -- removing the presence that kept her "badness" from imploding -- then someone was going to have to answer for this change. And they would have to answer to the same person they were trying so hard to draw nearer to!
*
THE PARABLE OF THE "BAD" CHRISTIAN
As Elise told it, there was a church in a downtown area that was losing parishioners and needed restoring. Some people say it was a megachurch in the suburbs that had lost its charismatic pastor and was now suffering budget shortfalls. Others say it was in the middle of a city from which all the wealthy people had fled. In any case it was a church that people pitied or criticized more than they respected. And the more energetic members felt it needed a lot of work.
There was a "bad" Christian who belonged to this church. Well, no doubt there was more than one, but in this parable there only needs to be one. The trouble with this "bad" Christian was that people didn't find her interesting or useful. She wasn't good looking or young. She wasn't eloquent. For some reason, she did not socialize well with other members -- when she tried she was always a bit awkward. Her jokes were too hectic. Whenever she was asked to a house she wasn't asked back. There was no deep fault anyone could identify, just a sense of someone whose clumsiness seemed out of step with the grace and beauty that was still a cherished part of the worship service. She simply didn't fit in.
The "bad" Christian could easily have volunteered to perform some chore that others appreciated. She could have picked up the loose bulletins after the service. She could have tried to greet newcomers. She might have brought some cookies to hospitality. Nothing stopped her from giving a ride to a senior citizen. Something, anything. She could have tried to be "good".
But all she did was to come week after week. And though her spiritual aura was drab and uninspiring, you couldn't deny that she came. She apparently found something in the church that nourished her. So she was a "bad" Christian but a Christian all the same. You couldn't really say otherwise
The better Christians grew more and more frustrated and dissatisfied with their church, and some of them even stopped going. They took a sabbatical or began shopping around. Others just moved away. What do we do about this sorry place? the leaders asked. They would quote the old Ladies Home Journal cover: Can this marriage be saved? Then they would laugh self-consciously, uneasily. Because a church really was like a marriage -- changing a church was like undergoing a divorce. So you tried to stay as long as you could.
And the better Christians -- the ones that didn't move away -- prayed over their uneasiness, sought discernment, hesitated to make a move. But finally some of them decided to secede and form a house church. We will not compromise, we will not spend all our time on asking for money, we won't focus on building a building instead of serving our sisters and brothers, we will be a true church. We will be new. We will be available to the community as this sorrowful place no longer is.
What in the world is a house church? asked the "bad" Christian. She had never heard about this.
And being the person she was she didn't understand what it was when they told her. She didn't get the point.
So she was left behind. And the house church went on to have some experiences that were as filled with the very spirit they had worried was lost. There was movement in the hearts of members and movement in the community surrounding them. What they'd done was in general a good thing.
Yes it was, but there was the "bad" Christian sitting in the church they'd left. Soon that church sank even further and further without their inspiration and finally began experiencing perpetual budget crises, the scary kind that lead people to wonder whether it isn't just time to close down. Perhaps everyone should move on to a house church. But there was always the "bad" Christian who didn't understand house churches, didn't get the emerging stuff that was happening, always seemed a step or two behind whatever was new and interesting. There was the Christian left behind.
If people had decided to take her church away from her, it was because the church wasn't interesting and neither was she. But if that meant removing the wafer from her mouth -- removing the presence that kept her "badness" from imploding -- then someone was going to have to answer for this change. And they would have to answer to the same person they were trying so hard to draw nearer to!
*
Thursday, September 09, 2004
(Interlude: Search for a new minister)
*
Meanwhile the parish was in the midst of its search for a new minister. It was a time of anxiety, of live spirits but anxiety. Some people said: what we need is a duplicate of Father Sam so we can retain our community, our vibrancy and... but others insisted that it was time for someone or something new.
What should he even look like? Sharlene asked. Are we even saying “he”? (Because there are talented women in ministry now). In any case, I will go out on a limb and say I go for someone as homely as possible. Downright ugly if we can only achieve it.
And the others cried: Sharlene!!! Why????
Not that a priest should be pretty? But why ugly, what’s the use of “the face that no one wants to look at”?
Well....
Well we as a society have had our fill and more so of the people who are good to look at. We have had so many ministers who look like newscasters and whose message seems somehow... oh, I’d say sweetened and made crisp by their newscaster looks. By their constant poise. By their never getting shaken up by anything anyone ever says. Insurance people, when what I want is not insurance but **risk**.
Oh, Sharlene.
I would like someone like Lincoln, only of course I don’t mean a politician. Someone whose pants roll up to his shins when he rides a horse, someone covered with dust, awkward and too tall or else heavy and squat with sweat going diagonal on his forehead. Someone not only easy to laugh at but who finds being laughed at easy also. Who are we not to be laughed at? I want to see the spirit move not so much in his Sunday words but in the way he moves through the other days, when the rest of us sit here biting each other’s heads off. Oh Sharlene.
Someone who doesn’t break a bruised reed, someone you don’t care about for the obvious reasons, someone who can take what is dished out by people like, well, like me. Oh Sharlene. Someone who knows what he wants and doesn’t get shaken off the one tree where he sees it growing. Someone I can follow, not just look at like I’m looking at you.
I want someone whose market value is nil and who doesn’t even care that much about raising money. He doesn’t have to worry about that, because if he exists, I’ll do the money raising for him. I want him to do the things I **can’t** do.
At that point the others laughed at her, shook the pool of resumes in front of her face and said: That’s all very well, dreamy girl. But this here pool is what we’ve got.
*
Meanwhile the parish was in the midst of its search for a new minister. It was a time of anxiety, of live spirits but anxiety. Some people said: what we need is a duplicate of Father Sam so we can retain our community, our vibrancy and... but others insisted that it was time for someone or something new.
What should he even look like? Sharlene asked. Are we even saying “he”? (Because there are talented women in ministry now). In any case, I will go out on a limb and say I go for someone as homely as possible. Downright ugly if we can only achieve it.
And the others cried: Sharlene!!! Why????
Not that a priest should be pretty? But why ugly, what’s the use of “the face that no one wants to look at”?
Well....
Well we as a society have had our fill and more so of the people who are good to look at. We have had so many ministers who look like newscasters and whose message seems somehow... oh, I’d say sweetened and made crisp by their newscaster looks. By their constant poise. By their never getting shaken up by anything anyone ever says. Insurance people, when what I want is not insurance but **risk**.
Oh, Sharlene.
I would like someone like Lincoln, only of course I don’t mean a politician. Someone whose pants roll up to his shins when he rides a horse, someone covered with dust, awkward and too tall or else heavy and squat with sweat going diagonal on his forehead. Someone not only easy to laugh at but who finds being laughed at easy also. Who are we not to be laughed at? I want to see the spirit move not so much in his Sunday words but in the way he moves through the other days, when the rest of us sit here biting each other’s heads off. Oh Sharlene.
Someone who doesn’t break a bruised reed, someone you don’t care about for the obvious reasons, someone who can take what is dished out by people like, well, like me. Oh Sharlene. Someone who knows what he wants and doesn’t get shaken off the one tree where he sees it growing. Someone I can follow, not just look at like I’m looking at you.
I want someone whose market value is nil and who doesn’t even care that much about raising money. He doesn’t have to worry about that, because if he exists, I’ll do the money raising for him. I want him to do the things I **can’t** do.
At that point the others laughed at her, shook the pool of resumes in front of her face and said: That’s all very well, dreamy girl. But this here pool is what we’ve got.
*
Story: The house church and the parable of the "bad" Christian (Part 1)
*
Part 1: The house church
Maria: What bothers me is the way they talk about us as though we were witches.
Sharlene: Right. Anyone who isn't beautiful and sort of soft, like melting ice cream. Compliant. Probably blond. Soft of voice. Very few of us.
Maria: I feel I can't move when they are around. They're watching, judging, expecting favors, never helping. I don't care for them.
Mary Louise: Of course we have to forgive them. I guess this is forgive and forget.
But just imagine life without them.
*
It can be nice to have an aggressive macho gung ho guy around, when you need to be defended.
Yes but who do you need to be defended from? An aggressive macho gung ho guy. An assailant.
If the one wasn't around you wouldn't need the other. What if you didn't have either one?
*
The women began imagining a house church. The worship would be pure because those who sully its purity wouldn't be there in the first place.
The door would be locked but on the inside of the lock, one could call on God safely. In peace. In true Christian peace.
*
No more sermons that are disguised pleas for money.
Mary Louise: I could regain the peace I seem to have lost.
Elise: Girls, this is a very bad idea.
Picking your community. That's not how it's done. That's like being the kind of missionary Oswald Chambers says not to be. Running out and choosing your field instead of letting the Master "engineer your circumstances".
Yes but we're not missionaries. We're just girls trying to purify our lives a little bit.
Lots of people do house churches all over the country. It's part of, you know, the "emergence". It's connected to tomorrow. I think God wants us to do this.
That's when Elise tried to improvise The Parable of the Bad Christian, in a big hurry, a story that convinced nobody but nevertheless needs to be shared as a portion of Part 2.
*
Part 1: The house church
Maria: What bothers me is the way they talk about us as though we were witches.
Sharlene: Right. Anyone who isn't beautiful and sort of soft, like melting ice cream. Compliant. Probably blond. Soft of voice. Very few of us.
Maria: I feel I can't move when they are around. They're watching, judging, expecting favors, never helping. I don't care for them.
Mary Louise: Of course we have to forgive them. I guess this is forgive and forget.
But just imagine life without them.
*
It can be nice to have an aggressive macho gung ho guy around, when you need to be defended.
Yes but who do you need to be defended from? An aggressive macho gung ho guy. An assailant.
If the one wasn't around you wouldn't need the other. What if you didn't have either one?
*
The women began imagining a house church. The worship would be pure because those who sully its purity wouldn't be there in the first place.
The door would be locked but on the inside of the lock, one could call on God safely. In peace. In true Christian peace.
*
No more sermons that are disguised pleas for money.
Mary Louise: I could regain the peace I seem to have lost.
Elise: Girls, this is a very bad idea.
Picking your community. That's not how it's done. That's like being the kind of missionary Oswald Chambers says not to be. Running out and choosing your field instead of letting the Master "engineer your circumstances".
Yes but we're not missionaries. We're just girls trying to purify our lives a little bit.
Lots of people do house churches all over the country. It's part of, you know, the "emergence". It's connected to tomorrow. I think God wants us to do this.
That's when Elise tried to improvise The Parable of the Bad Christian, in a big hurry, a story that convinced nobody but nevertheless needs to be shared as a portion of Part 2.
*
Monday, September 06, 2004
Story: Like Meryl Streep's bad acting
*
Is bad luck that brings you to God really so bad? If it breaks your spirit, is it bad? Are you sure?
Is the guy who loses all his money and learns not to rely on it someone you would pity? Has the badness brought him to a better place? Is that new mountaintop good?
Is the pain such a terrible thing?
If life considered in cold blood would be a chutes and ladders game, with lots of small climbs and lots of sudden falls, then whad would your own cold blood tell you? Weren't falls often more beautiful than climbs? In God's judgment was it the case that down was up and upward down?
SPIRITUAL TEMPTATION TO SUICIDE?
When a guy stood looking down at Douglas Island -- suddenly created out of fog -- his soul leaped down the side of the mountain, sensing that God was there to receive him with open arms. But fortunately, as one hopes, his body had more sense and held him gripped onto the lookout high on the mountaintop, having forbidden him to jump but leaving him in fear. And this fear was in fact a gift.
*
Matt laughed at the height but Dave was afraid.
Dave's stepfather, an acrophobiac like himself, pinpointed the source of the fear: when you look down, you actually want to jump. A part of you does. The fear is a piece of you that you can't just tear off and discard.
It feels as though God is more there than here. the fear brings salvation present. The possibility, the reality. Then you feel God's love within your fear. Bless God for all creation including my sick racing heart. I will fall but I will also climb.
The lichen clung to the spruce and refused to look around. Something powerful was here. The fog only doubled whatever it was. The boats and refineries at the bottom of the vista looked like toys.
*
Over and over, Dave received evidence of what a bad Christian he was, or that he was not a Christian at all. Whereas his new buddy Matt just rested in his faith and didn't prod it much. After alll, brother, it's all about God, not about me, right?
There was an ambiance of trust around Matt that was too happy to move or change. Obese and alluring, he fit like a puzzle piece into the rich and heavy air of Alaska. But for Dave, happiness itself was problematic and difficult to identify or seize. Faith backed away from it. If he were to feel it, his first response would be to prod it and push it until it was no longer itself. No longer happy.
When he walked along he sidewalk and a stranger jostled him, his first impulse was always to haul off and punch the guy. Only a second later he remembered not only not to do it but not want to -- because you're walking with God, remember? But there was always that second filled with rage, to remind him of who he was. His decency was something hastily applied, on top, not really him.
*
It was like Meryl Streep's horrible acting. In a turkey like The Hours you could watch her react to the other character, you could see the wheels lifting the tram. She was saying: Now how shall I play the next line? Everything voulu, everything willed in isolation. You could watch the decision being made, you could see it form. Then came the vibrant and sincere acting, but it was too late, it came after a hesitation that told you how artificial the feeling was.
And Dave's Christianity was like that. There was a forced quality to his goodness that he himself couldn't stand. He would fall down the chute of anger or lust or greed, then pick himself up, climb up again to the distant regions blessed by God, but always wondering if the blessing could really be meant for him. Well, the climbing was painful and the pain was real. There was something to that. There was no bad acting there.
*
Is bad luck that brings you to God really so bad? If it breaks your spirit, is it bad? Are you sure?
Is the guy who loses all his money and learns not to rely on it someone you would pity? Has the badness brought him to a better place? Is that new mountaintop good?
Is the pain such a terrible thing?
If life considered in cold blood would be a chutes and ladders game, with lots of small climbs and lots of sudden falls, then whad would your own cold blood tell you? Weren't falls often more beautiful than climbs? In God's judgment was it the case that down was up and upward down?
SPIRITUAL TEMPTATION TO SUICIDE?
When a guy stood looking down at Douglas Island -- suddenly created out of fog -- his soul leaped down the side of the mountain, sensing that God was there to receive him with open arms. But fortunately, as one hopes, his body had more sense and held him gripped onto the lookout high on the mountaintop, having forbidden him to jump but leaving him in fear. And this fear was in fact a gift.
*
Matt laughed at the height but Dave was afraid.
Dave's stepfather, an acrophobiac like himself, pinpointed the source of the fear: when you look down, you actually want to jump. A part of you does. The fear is a piece of you that you can't just tear off and discard.
It feels as though God is more there than here. the fear brings salvation present. The possibility, the reality. Then you feel God's love within your fear. Bless God for all creation including my sick racing heart. I will fall but I will also climb.
The lichen clung to the spruce and refused to look around. Something powerful was here. The fog only doubled whatever it was. The boats and refineries at the bottom of the vista looked like toys.
*
Over and over, Dave received evidence of what a bad Christian he was, or that he was not a Christian at all. Whereas his new buddy Matt just rested in his faith and didn't prod it much. After alll, brother, it's all about God, not about me, right?
There was an ambiance of trust around Matt that was too happy to move or change. Obese and alluring, he fit like a puzzle piece into the rich and heavy air of Alaska. But for Dave, happiness itself was problematic and difficult to identify or seize. Faith backed away from it. If he were to feel it, his first response would be to prod it and push it until it was no longer itself. No longer happy.
When he walked along he sidewalk and a stranger jostled him, his first impulse was always to haul off and punch the guy. Only a second later he remembered not only not to do it but not want to -- because you're walking with God, remember? But there was always that second filled with rage, to remind him of who he was. His decency was something hastily applied, on top, not really him.
*
It was like Meryl Streep's horrible acting. In a turkey like The Hours you could watch her react to the other character, you could see the wheels lifting the tram. She was saying: Now how shall I play the next line? Everything voulu, everything willed in isolation. You could watch the decision being made, you could see it form. Then came the vibrant and sincere acting, but it was too late, it came after a hesitation that told you how artificial the feeling was.
And Dave's Christianity was like that. There was a forced quality to his goodness that he himself couldn't stand. He would fall down the chute of anger or lust or greed, then pick himself up, climb up again to the distant regions blessed by God, but always wondering if the blessing could really be meant for him. Well, the climbing was painful and the pain was real. There was something to that. There was no bad acting there.
*
Saturday, September 04, 2004
The cement-mixer
*
Is the faithful one like a drunkard on the steps? Like the avid connoisseur of drugs? If you were to judge by appearances is this what you would say?
God fills his follower's heart to the near exclusion of the world. The world lies underfoot but is hard to navigate, hard to negotiate because its solid floor lies at right angles to the other path, the better path, which is: this closeness to God. Buying food, getting to work and then working, those are side effects of this other, more intimate walk. So the God-drawn one has the hardest time putting his foot down before him. His attention is elsewhere.
Meanwhile, hard core "Christians" -- the ones who reduce faith to behavior control -- they watch the faithful one walking and grow disgusted. Her steps do not add up into a rational path. Her feet dance the drunkard's dance. The one who is pulling her off the path, that one is difficult to see.
What would a reassembled world look like to the one who is drunk with God? Since I am your average backyard sinner, I must be careful describing what I barely know. But I think the foreground and background of the picture might be changing places. Seen thru God's eyes.
A typical picture in our city: 2 well-dressed women walking into a store. A homeless man stands in front of the store. Cars rush by. But the drunken one cannot see the cars and the store is just a sort of black void that is receding from the picture and not really part of it. Whatever enters the store also disappears. Well then, is the homeless man at the center of the picture? Is the appalling smell that he gives off in reality an elixir concocted by God? Where is God in this landscape and where exactly are you? Disorientation is more or less your strongest clue.
*
And the pavement circles you like a cement mixer as you try to figure out just where you are.
*
Is the faithful one like a drunkard on the steps? Like the avid connoisseur of drugs? If you were to judge by appearances is this what you would say?
God fills his follower's heart to the near exclusion of the world. The world lies underfoot but is hard to navigate, hard to negotiate because its solid floor lies at right angles to the other path, the better path, which is: this closeness to God. Buying food, getting to work and then working, those are side effects of this other, more intimate walk. So the God-drawn one has the hardest time putting his foot down before him. His attention is elsewhere.
Meanwhile, hard core "Christians" -- the ones who reduce faith to behavior control -- they watch the faithful one walking and grow disgusted. Her steps do not add up into a rational path. Her feet dance the drunkard's dance. The one who is pulling her off the path, that one is difficult to see.
What would a reassembled world look like to the one who is drunk with God? Since I am your average backyard sinner, I must be careful describing what I barely know. But I think the foreground and background of the picture might be changing places. Seen thru God's eyes.
A typical picture in our city: 2 well-dressed women walking into a store. A homeless man stands in front of the store. Cars rush by. But the drunken one cannot see the cars and the store is just a sort of black void that is receding from the picture and not really part of it. Whatever enters the store also disappears. Well then, is the homeless man at the center of the picture? Is the appalling smell that he gives off in reality an elixir concocted by God? Where is God in this landscape and where exactly are you? Disorientation is more or less your strongest clue.
*
And the pavement circles you like a cement mixer as you try to figure out just where you are.
*
Friday, September 03, 2004
Poem: The inward as the path to the outward
*
Walking slowly through and into sand,
nothing but sand that whips the face
and draws lines on the eyeballs, permanent
arabesques of sadness, sir,
holy sir, my melancholy sir,
where do you think you go? Away from "here"?
Do you think you've escaped this world, this "here"?
The sand lacks all nutrition, scorpions
are sculpted out of air and their despair
is indigestible -- even the birds
avoid all flights that happen to cross near
this destitution. Only God
cares to be present here -- yet where you meet
God, the earth lies trembling at your feet.
*
Walking slowly through and into sand,
nothing but sand that whips the face
and draws lines on the eyeballs, permanent
arabesques of sadness, sir,
holy sir, my melancholy sir,
where do you think you go? Away from "here"?
Do you think you've escaped this world, this "here"?
The sand lacks all nutrition, scorpions
are sculpted out of air and their despair
is indigestible -- even the birds
avoid all flights that happen to cross near
this destitution. Only God
cares to be present here -- yet where you meet
God, the earth lies trembling at your feet.
*
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Dave's dream
*
After eating too much fatty gunk in the late hours, Dave tossed and kneaded himself through the night, making no headway on the twisting road to rest, because even rest had become painful.
When morning finally came, he tipped himself almost into wakefulness but couldn't make the last twist. At 7 he dreamed that he was in a restaurant facing a plate of chicken that still had a mouth attached -- it pecked his hand and face, it wouldn't lie still. His own food was eating him. The dream went on and on, even as its minutes should have thinned into the breathable air of daytime logic -- because none of this could ever possibly happen. They wouldn't take the plate away. He woke panting and late for the food closet where he would be volunteering.
When he told a client about the dream, the man understood it instantly, the way "ordinary" middle class people never do. You may have gotten a warning not to eat any more meat, the man said. There's a chance that maybe a thousand Christians all over the country had the same dream at the same time.
It was as though the man too had had the dream.
Prayer is no trouble at all, it happens completely naturally, whenever you are terrified.
*
After eating too much fatty gunk in the late hours, Dave tossed and kneaded himself through the night, making no headway on the twisting road to rest, because even rest had become painful.
When morning finally came, he tipped himself almost into wakefulness but couldn't make the last twist. At 7 he dreamed that he was in a restaurant facing a plate of chicken that still had a mouth attached -- it pecked his hand and face, it wouldn't lie still. His own food was eating him. The dream went on and on, even as its minutes should have thinned into the breathable air of daytime logic -- because none of this could ever possibly happen. They wouldn't take the plate away. He woke panting and late for the food closet where he would be volunteering.
When he told a client about the dream, the man understood it instantly, the way "ordinary" middle class people never do. You may have gotten a warning not to eat any more meat, the man said. There's a chance that maybe a thousand Christians all over the country had the same dream at the same time.
It was as though the man too had had the dream.
Prayer is no trouble at all, it happens completely naturally, whenever you are terrified.
*
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Then he questions
*
"All sheep and oxen, *
even the wild beasts of the field,"
they are okay -- so why am not I?
*
"All sheep and oxen, *
even the wild beasts of the field,"
they are okay -- so why am not I?
*
Dave tries not to lie
*
Because only what you actually are can be saved -- not what you pretend to be -- nothing is more important than actually being that horrible appalling person that, so unfortunately, you in fact are. Be what you are, not somebody else, even if that somebody else is better. Because if you pretend to be well when you are ill, and then God rewards and saves the well image of you, what happens to the reality, the sick person you actually are? Who benefits when the the poster of the actress is blessed but the actress is not?
If nothing else, telling the truth at all times is imperative. Truth is not a luxury.
*
Now the man who had saved Dave from being abused every night in prison had also brought him to read Kierkegaard -- that impossible Danish philosopher & scold -- that awkward unglamorous *Christian*, of all things -- now reduced to sad somber dog-eared porridge in the prison library. Kierkegaard was the road to many a religious conversion in prison, because even the books' obscurity somehow pointed outward, which was enough.
When Dave didn't understand a word -- and he didn't understand very many or perhaps any -- he would simply use that word as a placeholder in his traversal of the sentence. He would read the words anyway. So a word like "ideality" -- and what the hell is that anyway? what could it be within a prison? -- he would simply hold like a precious jewel and lay it down carefully in the context of the paragraph. It seemed to rest on dark velvet. It was what he didn't have and what still existed anyway, austere and quite graspable. Over time "ideality" and "reduplication" took on some sort of meaning that was what they came to mean for him, which was something beyond freedom.
*
Now, today, on parole, free but not free, he would reread the books as intently as a man trying to re-find himself. "The strivings [of a businessman or professor] are worn like gaudy clothes -- but people reaching for the absolute seem to be walking around naked, they offend everybody, you can't help laughing."
The mouth that tells the truth is ugly, repulsive.
Yes, Dave said. But not to God.
*
Because only what you actually are can be saved -- not what you pretend to be -- nothing is more important than actually being that horrible appalling person that, so unfortunately, you in fact are. Be what you are, not somebody else, even if that somebody else is better. Because if you pretend to be well when you are ill, and then God rewards and saves the well image of you, what happens to the reality, the sick person you actually are? Who benefits when the the poster of the actress is blessed but the actress is not?
If nothing else, telling the truth at all times is imperative. Truth is not a luxury.
*
Now the man who had saved Dave from being abused every night in prison had also brought him to read Kierkegaard -- that impossible Danish philosopher & scold -- that awkward unglamorous *Christian*, of all things -- now reduced to sad somber dog-eared porridge in the prison library. Kierkegaard was the road to many a religious conversion in prison, because even the books' obscurity somehow pointed outward, which was enough.
When Dave didn't understand a word -- and he didn't understand very many or perhaps any -- he would simply use that word as a placeholder in his traversal of the sentence. He would read the words anyway. So a word like "ideality" -- and what the hell is that anyway? what could it be within a prison? -- he would simply hold like a precious jewel and lay it down carefully in the context of the paragraph. It seemed to rest on dark velvet. It was what he didn't have and what still existed anyway, austere and quite graspable. Over time "ideality" and "reduplication" took on some sort of meaning that was what they came to mean for him, which was something beyond freedom.
*
Now, today, on parole, free but not free, he would reread the books as intently as a man trying to re-find himself. "The strivings [of a businessman or professor] are worn like gaudy clothes -- but people reaching for the absolute seem to be walking around naked, they offend everybody, you can't help laughing."
The mouth that tells the truth is ugly, repulsive.
Yes, Dave said. But not to God.
*
Dave meditating in bed
*
And to tell the truth, now how do you do that? Telling the truth is a bigger high than any orgasm, more powerful than any drug. I want to wedge myself so deeply in truth that I give off the smell of truth, fair or foul, so when the truth is gritty I am nothing but grit and when the truth is shameful I am a walking cesspool of shame. If I can manage that humiliation, then later, when the truth turns into joy as we know it ultimately does, I can be rendered, be seen as joy. No no, not "be seen as" but "be". I want to be true, to a greater extent true even than good, given how "even when we are unfaithful God remains faithful, because he cannot deny himself" and "cannot lie".
Imagine going even 24 hours without telling even a single lie.
*
And to tell the truth, now how do you do that? Telling the truth is a bigger high than any orgasm, more powerful than any drug. I want to wedge myself so deeply in truth that I give off the smell of truth, fair or foul, so when the truth is gritty I am nothing but grit and when the truth is shameful I am a walking cesspool of shame. If I can manage that humiliation, then later, when the truth turns into joy as we know it ultimately does, I can be rendered, be seen as joy. No no, not "be seen as" but "be". I want to be true, to a greater extent true even than good, given how "even when we are unfaithful God remains faithful, because he cannot deny himself" and "cannot lie".
Imagine going even 24 hours without telling even a single lie.
*
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