It’s morning, Jesus. It’s morning, and here’s that light and sound all over again.
I’ve got to move fast… get into the bathroom, wash up, grab a bite to eat, and run some more.
I just don’t feel like it, Lord. What I really want to do is to get back into bed, pull up the covers, and sleep. All I seem to want today is the big sleep, and here I’ve got to run all over again.
Where am I running? You know these things I can’t understand. It’s not that I need to have you tell me. What counts most is just that somebody knows, and its you. That helps a lot.
So I’ll follow along, okay? But lead, Lord. Now I’ve got to run. Ar you running with me, Jesus?
I’m crying and shouting inside tonight, Lord, and I’m feeling completely alone.
All the roots I thought I had are gone. Everything in my life is in an upheaval. I am amazed that I can maintain any composure when I’m feeling like this.
The moment is all that matters; the present moment is of supreme importance. I know this. Yet in the present I feel dead. I want to anchor myself in the past and shed tears of self-pity. When I look ahead tonight I can see only futility, pain, and death. I am only a rotting body, a vessel of disease, potentially a handful of ashes after I am burned.
But you call me tonight to love and responsibility. You have a job for me to do. You make me look at other persons whose needs make my self-pity a mockery and a disgrace.
Lord, I hear you. I know you. I feel your presence strongly in this awful moment, and I thank you. Help me onto my feet. Help me to get up.
You said there is perfect freedom in your service, Lord
Well, I don’t feel perfectly free. I don’t feel free at all. I’m a captive to myself.
I do what I want. I have it all on my own way. There is no freedom at all for me in this, Jesus. Today I feel like a slave bound in chains and branded by a hot iron because I’m a captive to my own will and don’t give an honest damn about you or your will.
You’re over there where I’m keeping you, outside my life. how can I go on being such a lousy hypocrite? Come over here, where I don’t want you to come. Let me quite playing this blasphemous game of religion with you. Jesus, help me to let you be yourself in my life–so that I can be myself.
~Malcolm Boyd; Are you running with me, Jesus?
Are You Running With Me, Jesus? 40th Anniversary Edition
Author: Malcolm Boyd
“Vengeance is mine,” He says: with a right understanding of it, we might as well pray for God’s vengeance as for His forgiveness; that vengeance is, to destroy the sin–to make the sinner abjure and hate it; nor is there any satisfaction in a vengeance that seeks or effects less. The man himself must turn against himself, and so be for himself. if nothing else will do, then hellfire; if less will do, whatever brings repentance and self-repudiation, is god’s repayment. Friends, if any prayer are offered against us; if the vengeance of God be cried out for, because of some wrong you or I have done, god grant us His vengeance! Let us not think that we shall get off!
~George MacDonald, God’s Vengeance
George MacDonald
Author: C. S. Lewis
A friend of mine recently wrote a summary blog article that I believe captures the usefulness of Hell in the process of personal sanctification and its horrible necessity by our demand.
I recently signed myself up to be slapped about the face 2 or 3 nights a week. I am learning as much as I can from each smack and surprise wallop to my cheeks, after all this corporal wisdom does not come free.
But it has quickly surpassed a “get the most slap for the buck” responsibility; I really think I need to learn something new about my stance in life and relation to others… plus it just feels good to be taught by a confident instructor.
I have been threatening for years to start down the path of becoming a ninja, well now is the time… and Bruce Lee is my teacher.
I finally walked all the way to my local dojo; which is about a block and a half from my house… my neighborhood just gets more awesome every time I choose to discover it.
Waiting at the Ambrose Academy was Rocco Ambrose (Sibok, or Teacher), with a confident, ready smile and lighting fast (yet gentle) smacks to the face. Wing Chun Do is the class, but humility and surprise is the teacher.
I am just now starting to realize how many years I have been treading water in so many do-it-yourself learning environments. Modern life can be horribly insulating and our tools of ready information retrieval continue to subtly trick us into thinking we do not need people anymore to learn anything.
Sure, I could fire up youtube and watch countless hours of horribly produced (and a few decently produced) instructional seminars on martial arts… but nothing will ever come close to the pleasant satisfaction of trying to punch Sibok Ambrose and have him block my feeble attempt and deliver three consecutive chops to my neck and face before I have the time to blink.
The isolation and disembodied culture of the emerging e-learning universe can not lay a finger on this type of experience. It’s like being parched and trying to drink an old bucket of jello compared to the fresh water of a live teacher.
You’re too stiff, loosen up… how are you going to be able to react to anything when you are so stiff…
~Sibok Ambrose
I could read this in a book or watch it as a lesson in a video, but until I have to practice against an embodied attempt to punch me in the face… this is the sort of wisdom that my person simply cannot absorb in any sort of significant capacity.
Maybe that is something of what Jesus was getting at with His personal analogy to that of Living Water… there is a well of religion that we return to out of necessity, and if we are paying attention we may actually be able to meet in person the source of all wisdom and life sustaining power.
13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
This is the sort of thing that makes Christianity a difficult, perhaps impossible, experience to enter into on our own power.
When I was growing up in the church there was a constant emphasis on having a deep and abiding “Relationship with Christ”. More often than not, this advice would spin me down the mental pathways of trying to conjure a special imaginary friend named “jesus”.
These mental games of trying to create a person out of my conscience, random searchings for evidence of The Holy Spirit, and aftermath providence interpretations of God’s plan for my life composed my personal integration of the Trinity.
But is it real? Was any of it real?
These are the moments of honest inquiry that can completely shipwreck a make believe faith… as they should.
To be honest, it can still leave me feeling queezy when contemplated.
To say Thou art God, without knowing what the Thou means–of what use is it? God is a name only, except we know God.
~George MacDonald, The Knowledge of God
He who does that which he sees, shall understand, he who is set upon understanding rather than doing, shall go on stumbling and mistaking and speaking foolishness…. It is he that runneth that shall read, and no other. It is not intended by the speaker of the parables that any other should know intellectually what, known but intellectually, would be for his injury–what, grasped, perhaps even appropriated. When the pilgrim of the truth comes on his journey to the region of the parable, he finds its interpretation. It is not a fruit or a jewel to be stored, but a well springing by the wayside.
I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.
Good people… have been tempted to tempt the Lord their God upon the strength of this saying… Happily for such, the assurance to which they would give the name of faith generally fails them in time. Faith is that which, knowing the Lord’s will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stand and waits…
But to put God to the question in any other way than by saying, “What will though have me to do?” is an attempt to compel God to declare Himself, or to hasten His work… The man is therein dissociating himself from God so far that, instead of acting by the divine will from within, he acts in God’s face, as it were, to see what He will do. Man’s first business is, “What does God want me to do?”, not “What will God do if I do so and so?”
Purity and Innocence
Or maybe just a lack of experience
Give your heart some time
And you will be surprised what you find
Those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart… For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man…
Initially we trust in our ignorance, calling it innocence, and next we trust our innocence, calling it purity. Then when we hear these strong statements from our Lord, we shrink back, saying, “But I never felt any of those awful things in my heart.” We resent what He reveals. Either Jesus Christ is the supreme authority on the human heart, or He is not worth paying any attention to. Am I prepared to trust the penetration of His Word into my heart, or would I prefer to trust my own “innocent ignorance”? If I will take an honest look at myself, becoming fully aware of my so-called innocence and putting it to the test, I am very likely to have a rude awakening that what Jesus Christ said is true, and I will be appalled at the possibilities of the evil and the wrong within me. But as long as I remain under the false security of my own “innocence,” I am living in a fool’s paradise. If I have never been an openly rude and abusive person, the only reason is my own cowardice coupled with the sense of protection I receive from living a civilized life. But when I am open and completely exposed before God, I find that Jesus Christ is right in His diagnosis of me.
The only thing that truly provides protection is the redemption of Jesus Christ. If I will simply hand myself over to Him, I will never have to experience the terrible possibilities that lie within my heart. Purity is something far too deep for me to arrive at naturally. But when the Holy Spirit comes into me, He brings into the center of my personal life the very Spirit that was exhibited in the life of Jesus Christ, namely, the Holy Spirit, which is absolute unblemished purity.
Thankfulness works in the Christian community as it usually does in the Christian life. Only those who give thanks for the little things receive the great things as well. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts prepared for us because we do not give thanks for the daily gifts. We think that we should be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must be constantly seeking the great gifts. Then we complain that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experiences that God has given to other Christians, and we consider these complaints to be pious… If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian community in which we have been placed, even when there are no great experience, no noticeable riches, but much weakness, difficulty, and little faith… then we hinder God from letting our community grow according to the measure and riches that are there for us all in Jesus Christ.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 5)
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
On innumerable occasions a whole Christian community has been shattered because it has lived on the basis of a wishful image. Certainly serious Christians who are put in a community for the first time will often bring with them a very definite image of what Christian communal life should be, and they will be anxious to realize it. But God’s grace quickly frustrates all such dreams. A great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves, is bound to overwhelm us as surely as God desires to lead us to an understanding of genuine Christian community. By sheer grace God will not permit us to live in a dream world even for a few weeks and to abandon ourselves to those blissful experiences and exalted moods that sweep over us like a wave of rapture. For God is not a God of emotionalism, but the God of truth. Only that community which enters into the experience of this great disillusionment with all its unpleasant and evil appearances begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 5)
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to have, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated.
~George MacDonald, Spiritual Murder
George MacDonald
Author: C. S. Lewis
22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother[a]will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,[b]’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them
And I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
‘Cuz everyone knows that’s how you get famous
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track, yeah I’m on to a winner
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cuz I’m being taken over by the Fear
Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
And that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic
And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And its not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track, yeah we’re on to a winner
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cuz I’m being taken over by the Fear
Forget about guns and forget ammunition
‘Cuz I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything is cool as long as I’m getting thinner
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
And when do you think it will all become clear?
‘Cuz I’m being taken over by the Fear
Not our deed, nor our courage or strength, not our people, not our truth, but God’s truth alone. Why? because to be free does not mean to be great in the world, to be free against our brothers and sisters, to be free against God; but it means to be free from ourselves, from our untruth, in which it seems as if I alone were there, as if I were the center of the world; to be free from the hatred with which I destroy God’s creation; to be free from myself in order to be free for others. God’s truth alone allows me to see others. It directs my attention, bent in on myself, to what is beyond and shows me the other person. And, as it does this, I experience the love and the grace of God. It destroys our untruth and creates truth. It destroys hatred and creates love. God’s truth is God’s love, and God’s love frees us from ourselves to be free for others. To be free means nothing else than to be in this love, and to be in this love means nothing else than to be in God’s truth.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom
A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I tried to communicate
I tried to relate
Now all I want to do is escape and vanish into fantasies
I ventured out of the galaxy into the outer regions
Where folks believe in something much much bigger than their demons
And aren’t controlled by their circumstances
Sounds romantic well dance with it slowly
In here my failures don’t control me
It’s a place of solitude but I’m not lonely
And it’s beautiful but lets be reasonable
It’s just not real it just plays with your imagination
And for a moment or two can make time stand still
But when it’s over all you have is a memory
I had to leave cuz the real world was calling me
I left my youth in pursuit of the truth and gained a world of dishonesty
I see your innocence and envy it
I reminisce of mine and remember it
Full of peace full of hope full of truth
I remember when I used to be you before you became me
I see your innocence and envy it
I reminisce of mine and remember it
Full of peace full of hope full of truth
I remember when I used to be you before you became me
Man it’s sort of overwhelming
It didn’t seem like I was storytelling
But you didn’t believe me when I told you that I could see my
Hopes and dreams come alive as it seems
But there’s a time and place for everything
Well I left my imagination there
Now it’s only what I can touch see taste and hear
With my natural senses I wish I could stretch the limits
But my defenses keep me limited from the boundaries I set
So I won’t get burned again
Sure I’d like to be optimistic but that doesn’t line up well with reality
So I’ll go to sleep now and dream of a younger healthier better me
Don’t mistake innocence for ignorance
Don’t mistake purity for inexperience
Don’t mistake humility for weakness
I sincerely mean this
You understand more than you know
There’s no goal like peace of mind
So what else are you trying to find
What’s left except regret and heartache
And yes your heart will break and go numb lots of times before this life is done
You’ll look for answers but there’s just one
Patience one day it will make sense
But waiting is a pinch waking you up from the worlds you’ve made up
The one where you dream and the one where you gave up
Time to create a new atmosphere where the boy and the cynic can both play fair
Picture a small band of socially awkward “techies”, graced by unabashed enthusiasm for a technology of obsession, rising the Vulcan Finger Split salute in perfect solidarity.
This is the glory of the modern technology “User Group”, all the power of the Black Panthers and as graceful as a local church congregation.
Every once in a while I forget how big of a nerd I am, but every time I return to the user group setting and find myself completely enthralled in a discussion of software check boxes, the future of the internet, the rise and fall of Microsoft, and the next evolution of digital whatever… I know I am being myself, and it feels really good.
I actually facilitate and participate in a variety of “User Group Meetups” focused on everything from internet technologies to creative writing, and I love it.
There is something special for me about these types of meetings, they are beyond mere affinity and yet they are focused on something in common that draws everyone outside of themselves to share information, expertise, and knowledge in such a way that the entire community is lifted and in so doing a greater movement is supported.
I recently watched a small documentary entitled MacHeads that took a tongue in cheek fanboy look at the infamous subculture of Apple computer worshipers.
This film went through the typical history of the modern PC revolution and followed out a few personalities as they travailed the ups and downs of Mac loyalty through the recent decades of iEverything coming to the masses.
But towards the end of the film, the conversations and focus took a peculiar inward turn to highlight the stalwart role of the “User Group” in preserving Apple through the tough times and the strange obsolescence of such groups in the good times.
It is hard to appreciate now just how vital a local user group was in the pre-internet era. There was a time when access to knowledge was limited to printed literature, perhaps a few video tutorials; but the majority of the learning and sharing happened in these user groups of embodied presence.
A few of the veteran Mac users who founded the original user groups spoke of their now defunct status with a sense of loss that I do believe is more profound than simple nostalgia. Once the users were connected online and the information flowed freely between servers, meeting lost its point… and communities were slowly disbanded without any justifiable purpose. All the information is online, so why bother getting together…
…with the internet I have the concern that people go out, they find their answer, and then they don’t come back, they don’t build a community of lasting connections. It will be different, it won’t look like what it used to look like.
~Mac User and Founder of now disbanded User Group of 15 years
…the internet killed us, I was losing that sense of human contact because you are meeting people that you would never have an opportunity to meet otherwise. When you go to Google to find an answer to a question, all you find out is the answer to that question, very difficult to get that random connection and information that you had no idea existed but it will change your life as soon as you hear about it.
~Mac User and Former User Group Member
I think the community is bigger than ever, but it is in a different form because it is all online. There are so many community websites, forums, and blogs…
…what the hell is a Mac community, there is kindof no need for a Mac community, I think it would be cool if there was one.
~Cool young new Mac users
It is very interesting to see these types of conversations compound on top of each other. The old users have seen something of a glory moment of solidarity that they now long for and the new users know something is missing that they can’t quite put their finger on.
I think there is something else to consider here, and I find this especially poignant. These people are not Luddites, iconoclasts of technology, or scoffers of progress. These are all people on the front lines of engaging technology in all walks of life, and yet they experience a loss with the success of their pursuits. A good idea can be taken too far and push into territory that should remain pure.
I have discovered a litany of modern thinkers that have lamented this seriously enough; Wendell Berry, Marshall McLuhan, Steve Talbott, Maggie Jackson, and Albert Borgmann to name a few.
Many of these authors push beyond the mere practicality of physical meetings and the pragmatic utility of why it is good for us to be physically present with each other, and into a discussion of something that is rooted much deeper inside the human need for communion and our spiritual need for embodied connectivity.
C.S. Lewis still describes for me with profound insight the practical first step of communion in the Body of the Church, the original holy user group.
Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not wholly pleased with it. May I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realize that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction. In the second place, the search for a “suitable” church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil. What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise—does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going. (You see how groveling, how unspiritual, how irredeemably vulgar He is!) This attitude, especially during sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to our whole policy) in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul. There is hardly any sermon, or any book, which may not be dangerous to us if it is received in this temper. So pray bestir yourself and send this fool the round of the neighboring churches as soon as possible. Your record up to date has not given us much satisfaction.
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