There is a feeling that comes over me at times when I think of Jesus Christ. When I really stop everything and think of Jesus the person, Jesus the only Son of God, Jesus the perfect sacrificial lamb - I feel terribly sad. So worthy, so holy, so good is Jesus. Such a terrible marvel that the spotless Lamb must suffer, must die because of mankind. It is a struggle to accept him and all that he is for myself. I say to myself, "He may have died for other people but not for me." I feel at times like curling into a ball, prostrate upon a patch of dark earth and whisper, "Unworthy! Unworthy! Unworthy!" and when I see and hear his love reaching out to me I inside cry "Unclean! Unclean! Unclean!" It is a hard thing for me to accept God's love shown to me through Christ.
The times when I do accept the truth are made all the more unbearable when I fail again, sin once again in the same way, fall to the same inner weakness. How many promises have I made to You and not kept?! How many unknown things do I do and think that are wrong in Your eyes?! How can God love me and want to have me as own?! How can He who is the the constant constancy in all of existence, willing receive me, the hopelessly inconsistent and fickle, into his arms?
I feel like church all my life has done nothing to ease my fears and sorrows. I have gone to many churches over the course of 20 years. From the smaller church where the pastor knew your name, to the mega church where I'm just a face in the crowd, I've experienced it all. The Church is the beloved of Christ and the Church is to be a body of people working together, needing many different parts in order to truly function. The concept doesn't seem to match the reality; some might ask, "Does that matter?", I ask "Shouldn't it matter?" There will I guess always be disagreements and difference in any man involving institution but that seems a poor explanation and a lame excuse for the disunity and non purity I've witnessed and experienced.
What would Paul say if he were here today? I wonder...
Monday, May 23, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
curbside curves
Sorry for not posting in over a week. I back dated the previous post to Fridays date. Since the news of Osama bin Laden's death (assassination?) I have been contemplating past memories and sorting out present feelings. I sort of lost my sharing, writing bug. I went into a cocoon of self-consciousness but I am over it now. So here we go, beginning once again...
curbside curves
On the way to work I noticed someone had put an old computer desk out by the garbage. It was one of those build it yourself, generic, laminated fiberboard desks. I began to wonder about the story of the discarded desk. I wondered who built it and why. I wondered about the study done and the knowledge gained. I wondered about the feeling the owner had the day they bought the desk and the time it took to build it. Did the owner ever think a day would come when it would be put out on the curb as garbage? I bet they didn't and that is the point that really stuck out to me. When we buy something new we never think about the day when we are going to say goodbye. When we buy
something we never think about the object breaking or becoming one day discarded.
I remember when I was little I had one of those toy play kitchens; it had a sink, stove and fridge. There are pictures of me unwrapping it at Christmas and stories of how excited I was. It had play dishes and fake food, everything you could need. Oddly enough I don't have any memory of playing with it but I do remember when I was much older helping hauling it out of the basement and setting it out to the curb for spring cleaning garbage pickup. There was a sticky spot in the sink from some experiment of mine gone awry, neglect had cast a thick film of dust upon it; it was no longer what it once was. Seeing that desk made me think how objects bought in a moment of time, are for a moment in time. Sometimes purchases are suspended in the moment of purchase and they can't move forward with time; A play kitchen gives way to the real kitchen, a fixed desk gives way to the mobile laptop. So much of our life can become wrapped up in objects and so many objects ultimately end up curbside. Some acquisitions don't last, they aren't meant to.
There is another angle to the curbside tale: one persons trash is another persons treasure. Sometimes things set curbside get a second chance at life. The play kitchen never made it to the dump, at least not on this curbside visit. Someone came and took it for their little one to play with. What is no longer useful to one person can be needed by another. My mom's recent move caused us to go through a lot of stuff, deciding whether it was donation, keepsake, or garbage. The joy of letting things go and giving stuff to those in need was one of the most freeing things I have experienced in a long time.
In life there are curves and curbs; maybe there are something things you need to put curbside and maybe life has thrown you some curves you need allow yourself to recover from. xo
curbside curves
On the way to work I noticed someone had put an old computer desk out by the garbage. It was one of those build it yourself, generic, laminated fiberboard desks. I began to wonder about the story of the discarded desk. I wondered who built it and why. I wondered about the study done and the knowledge gained. I wondered about the feeling the owner had the day they bought the desk and the time it took to build it. Did the owner ever think a day would come when it would be put out on the curb as garbage? I bet they didn't and that is the point that really stuck out to me. When we buy something new we never think about the day when we are going to say goodbye. When we buy something we never think about the object breaking or becoming one day discarded.
I remember when I was little I had one of those toy play kitchens; it had a sink, stove and fridge. There are pictures of me unwrapping it at Christmas and stories of how excited I was. It had play dishes and fake food, everything you could need. Oddly enough I don't have any memory of playing with it but I do remember when I was much older helping hauling it out of the basement and setting it out to the curb for spring cleaning garbage pickup. There was a sticky spot in the sink from some experiment of mine gone awry, neglect had cast a thick film of dust upon it; it was no longer what it once was. Seeing that desk made me think how objects bought in a moment of time, are for a moment in time. Sometimes purchases are suspended in the moment of purchase and they can't move forward with time; A play kitchen gives way to the real kitchen, a fixed desk gives way to the mobile laptop. So much of our life can become wrapped up in objects and so many objects ultimately end up curbside. Some acquisitions don't last, they aren't meant to.
There is another angle to the curbside tale: one persons trash is another persons treasure. Sometimes things set curbside get a second chance at life. The play kitchen never made it to the dump, at least not on this curbside visit. Someone came and took it for their little one to play with. What is no longer useful to one person can be needed by another. My mom's recent move caused us to go through a lot of stuff, deciding whether it was donation, keepsake, or garbage. The joy of letting things go and giving stuff to those in need was one of the most freeing things I have experienced in a long time.
In life there are curves and curbs; maybe there are something things you need to put curbside and maybe life has thrown you some curves you need allow yourself to recover from. xo
Friday, May 6, 2011
my 9-1-1 about 9/11
This has a couple swear words, it's unfiltered feelings. Please don’t read it if you can’t read past “curse words”. xo
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:44
September 11th, 2001 happened my senior year of high school. I remember the bell had rung ending English class. The teacher said something about an announcement going to be made over the loudspeaker regarding some national event, crisis. The story was a commercial airliner had crashed into one of the Twin Tower’s in New York City. There was at first no reason to assume that it was necessarily terrorist related. At first it was thought to be an accident, an error, a snafu but then... a second air plane crashed into the other tower... and we all knew... this was no accident. Reports were coming in of possible other planes missing and speculation was rampant regarding what the next target might be. Air traffic control centers across the country worked to land every single plane airborne in the United States immediately. It was a terrifying morning but the morning wasn’t over; the sight of the south tower crumbling... the sight of the north tower crumbling... the sight of the pentagon burning... the stories of people jumping out of the 110 story towers to their deaths, the tale of firefighters and policeman not running away from the towers but towards them... the day isn’t one you forget. I remember calling my mom from school to make sure was alright. Sometimes her work gave her reason to be in downtown Milwaukee and with major cities being attacked I was worried. I remember coming home from school, walking up the stairs and turning on CNN. The images of horror, no words can ever capture.
September 11th shattered that naivety that America was invulnerable. The bigger questions of “Why did this happen?” and “What does it mean?” didn’t linger long. Immediately a military attack was orchestrated with promises of retribution (“justice”). Immediately people handed over their civil liberties like they were tinker toys. The reason of “Why?” didn’t matter as much as the punching back. Prior to the disaster the leaders of our nation were looking for a way to attack Iraq and they manipulated the 9/11 event to be their reason. Prior to the disaster there were warnings of its coming and the leaders of our nation did nothing. Nothing was practically done to prevent this crisis but a hell of a lot of shit was blown up after it happened. Nice. How many innocent Afghani people died in our display of “You hit me, I pulverize you”? Will there be a memorial to them at the site of 9/11 or are they just as faceless, nameless and voiceless as they were before September 11th? How much tax money has exchanged hands under the table, even out in the open? “Bin Laden, wanted dead or alive” our cowboy President said then later it was “Osama Bin Laden who?” The bullshit of this fiasco staggers the mind. Water boarding, “wartime president” rhetoric, torture and humiliation of prisoners, assassinations, cover-ups, lies, deception, using fear to manipulate, terror levels, the pointless gesture of taking your shoes off at the airport - all this and more became our American way of life.
Never once do I remember praying for Osama Bin Laden. It is such a shaming thing that it never even occurred to me to pray for him. Prayer isn’t my natural inclination anyway but more on that another time. This is going to sound un-American perhaps but I never looked at Osama Bin Laden and thought “enemy”. I certainly didn’t think friend or buddy by any means, but the word enemy didn’t come to mind either. Osama Bin Laden was like an odd phantom, un-catchable and yet able to communicate via internet video; he was to me a caricature of a larger issue. His face was made a symbol of an ideological, fanatical religious movement but killing the face doesn’t kill the movement; just as the death of Hitler did not bring the death of Nazi ideology, unfortunately.
How do we and did we as Americans treat our enemy? I am not impressed or proud. If Rush Limbaugh is saying “Thank God for Obama” I have to question what it is that Obama has done. Praise from Rush is not something I aspire my leaders to have. I don’t know - the way this whole thing has been handled is rubbing me the wrong way. How is Osama being dead make everything or anything better? Different even? What does his being dead now have to do with anything?
I respect our military, I value our men and women who serve, have served and who have died. Don’t make this into a patriotism thing. How is us sacrificing our enemy and our military on the altar of patriotism any different from what they do to us? Don’t make this into a religious thing. How is us sacrificing our enemy and our military on the altar of religions any different from what they do to us? I just don’t understand the wars of the last 50 years. Why does it always come down to killing? Who is right when it comes down to it? Both sides say God is on their side but the harder work of truly seeking to know God is always, always left undone. It is so easy to say something and never understand it. We speak for God when He hasn't said anything. So wrong! If the retaliatory behavior against an offender is identical to the original offenders’ behavior - than what is the point? When we become what we say we hate, we're lost. This whole thing has cost us so much, not just in skyscrapers and symbols, not just in people and service - but in our character. Who are we as a government and as a people? I wish I could say I know but I just don’t anymore...
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