Tag Archives: Idenity

May 19th – June 2nd, 2006

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There’s a sense of….contentment? No. Peace…maybe. It’s not clean and pure. It’s tainted with the remains of idolatry….oooo! What I wrote in my long hand journal yesterday: At some point in time, every aspect of creation raises itself up, or is propped up by another aspect of creation in an effort to de-thrown the creator.

The smell of that still hangs in the air around me. It taints the otherwise lovely place I’m in these last few days. But it’s worth noting a couple of things about this lovely place:

  • It is directly linked to my spiritual disciplines. DUH!
  • It is directly linked to my willingness to put people’s opinions of me aside
  • It is still not ubiquitous (I start off conscious of God’s presence and feeling all cuddly in the morning but it wanes to mere neutrality by afternoon)
  • There is an anger just below the surface. The kind of hot, sharp, temper tantrum anger that makes me kick things out of my way, my heart to race, and vision get blurry. It seems only to find it’s focus on objects and ideas – not directly on people.

I’ve consciously said things or said them in a certain way, or behaved in a fashion that right sizes people in my world – I feel really free about it – I feel like God is being honored. But there is still the old man there, howling in the background. So even though it’s working, it’s like having a heckler. Maybe he’ll grow tired and shut-up if I keep doing things God’s way – or maybe I will simply learn to shut him out.

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This sermon on Romans 8….the old man. The way of the flesh. The law of sin and death…whatever you want to call it: Duality. This is where the mystery lies for me these days. All the concentric circles of “self” – trying to find the margins between who I am, and who I was – where the Spirit resides and where the redeemed me touches Him.

It’s still all very confusing to me – and I’m feeling a rising anxiety over trying to preach about all this on Sunday.

God, I’m in way over my head here theologically. In terms of doctrine – intellectually – in pretty much every way that a guy like me could get buried.

“Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life, hoping ourselves to rend the veil (between ourselves and God). God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy ‘acceptance’ from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done.” – A.W. Tozer

“Now is the time and place to wrestle before the divine face. If you will stand firm, if you do not bend, you will see and perceive great wonders. Christ will storm the hell in you and break your beasts.” – Jacob Boheme

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There has been an icreased awreness of God’s immensity. But its not immense in the AWE sense – the fear of God kind of immensity – it has a whispier quality to it. It is the still small voice kind of awareness.

Chris Rice Describes it well:

“I hear a sound and turn to hear a new direction on that rusty weathervane, suddenly the dead brown leaves are stirred to scratch their circle dances down the lane, and now those sturdy oaks start clap’n with the last few stubborn leaves that won’t let go, I can hear Old Glory snap’n and her tattered rope now clang’n against the pole and my breath is snatched away and a chill runs up my spine, feels like somethn’s on the way , so I look up to the sky I look up to the sky and from the corners of creation comes the father’s holy breath ridin’ on a storm with tender fierceness stirring my soul to holiness – stirring my soul to holiness…”

May 16th, 2006

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Alick asked me to write about the idea of “otherness” that I said made me miss Brazil. The words I jotted down as we spoke were: “otherness” “flow” “celebrity”. These were things that stood out to me about the Brazil experience.

I felt drawn to sit on the landing outside the children’s area at church this morning. As I went – I remembered the last time I sat there, and I recall gaining an insight about birds and how they don’t follow the paths and conventions of human development. They live in a FLOW outside the everyday life of humanity, though they still utilize it’s structures for homes, food, perches etc.

I began to think that perhaps inserting ourselves into another culture, another space, and another geography has a similar impact on us. Because the environment we find ourselves in is so “other”, like birds, we are un-able to use the structures around us for their intended purposes, and instead discover a beautiful, unintended “secret” purpose in the otherwise everyday things around us.

The child squatting outside his ramshackle hut tearing at a piece of bread with his teeth is not simply having breakfast – he is serving as a touch point with humanity.

The shouting and back-slapping at the corner bar serve not as a loud annoyance, but a reminder that I do not let Joy into my life. I scold Joy and keep him in the corner with his face to the wall for being petulant and insubordinate to his big brother named Accomplishment.

Ahh, “Flow”. This poor little child called Joy is much freer to play when his big brother is so disoriented by these strange surroundings. While Accomplishment is busy trying to find his ranking – Joy sneaks out and plays footeball with the other kids. He lies under the strange stars at night, and with great glee, sees the Southern Cross “for the first time” just like David Crosby sang about.

The smell of burning Cashew wood mingling with the dry musk of the soil does not simply tell me that the dry season is coming. It reminds me that I am part of an enormous creation that encompasses thousands of eco-systems, millions of stars and billions of other galaxies. The Atlantic seems saltier than the Pacific – but at least here, it won’t try to kill you for wading in it for 20 minutes.

There are, of course,  parallels to all of these structures here at home: The guy with the sign at the freeway off-ramp, the screaming children in that damn Habitrail thing at McDonald’s, and the salty smell of Bull Kelp that comes off Puget Sound when there is a West wind. But those are too familiar. I am too much a part of those structures for them to be anything other than a part of my life. Or could I CHOOSE to see them as more?

The following eyes of the Brazilians lounging on the corner remind me that I am a rare bird in Brazil. I’m a celebrity – flitting from roof top to roof top, learning my lessons, living my life high above their streets and telephone wires. My song must sound as strange to them as theirs does to me. We can live together for a while like this – weeks…maybe months, until time washes the otherness out of us like water and detergent wash a stain out of your shirt – and away it swirls down the drain. Then the flow begins to align with the local flow, which inevitably results in the loss of celebrity because you look just like everyone else, and they look just like you.

There should be a way to ALWAYS live out the otherness of being a citizen of Heaven. We should always look for the “secret” purpose of life’s structures, always able to flow with freedom from accomplishment, and as a result enjoy a certain amount of celebrity as we stand out against the world around us.