the picture is too vivid.  too irrevocable.  the story of a little boy (my son’s age) who dies before he reaches the hospital.  like kitty genovese, I remind myself.  people have been dying unrequittedly for millenia.  one baby’s death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.  still hurts.  the girl is found wandering down a street. covered with blood.  I wish her innocent but probably not.

first you should know that I have kicked myself out of a couple of churches.  the first was because there was no accountability.  the pastor was not reporting offerings to the church, there were ponzi schemes being shopped in the congregation and a candidate for a local judgeship was shopped from the pulpit.

the second was even worse.  we left a church because there was a self-identified pedophile who the church refused to supervise. 

the first church excommunicated us for leaving ( common people, we are all protestants here!)  and the second church harassed us until we sent them a cease and desist letter.

not promising

but i have gone to wonderful churches.  i will go to wonderful churches.  i thing we need to examine what it means to be a church.  we have lost sight of both the big and the very small picture

church means gathering, coming together.  a church is supposed to be like afamily or a community.  in one of the Gospel accounts of Jesus feeding the multitude He tells his disciples to get people to sit in groups of fifty.  that is  a church.  in jewish tradition a minyan of ten is a church.  technically just you talking to God is church.  we need to circle the wagons.  gather.  be with Him.  abide.

It is not easy to abide.  requires being with.  requires listening to.  requires living in the moment with God.

I suspect many of us are happy to look at church as an event, but do not look at it as part of an essential conversation.

I am crying out for the conversation.

I want to search every face and every horizon for my beloved

Jesus.

so gospel means good news.  people who refute the idea of the Bible as a divine love letter will say that the difference among the gospels proves the whole thing is a wash.  as a person who loves words i find this about as true as saying that William Faulkner was a hack (or a hick or a bully…) because he used multiple perspectives in his novels.  my view is this:  God is the author not just of the Bible but of all of our gospels. the stories of our lives with Him.  He is such a good author that his narrators are quite plentiful and diverse.

I like to listen to the Bible.  I hear things differently than when I read them.  I like to hear Him in all the love letters He has written. 

I have been listening to Luke’s gospel and I love the details, the doctorly-ness of it.  The perspective…

when the centurion’s servant lay dying.

I am honored by your comment but I believe you may want to re-read my post.  I roundly support all the Pitcairners who have been the victims of abuse on Pitcairn Island.  Let me say that again as clearly as possibly–EVERY LAST CHILD WHO WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED ON PITCAIRN OR ANY OTHER PLACE ON THE PLANET IS IN MY PRAYER.  I support the victims with my whole heart and want them to know that they are in my thoughts and prayers.

That being said, any person who compensates for or excuses the sexual abuse of children should be aware that there are no excuses for this behavior and that it is illegal.  I think that the men who were prosecuted got a slap on the wrist and that your making excuses for the rape of children is a disgrace.

I agree with the British government.  Children should be protected on Pitcairn Island and everywhere else on the planet for that matter..

I look forward to your thoughts on this.

I think that when someone dies the first part of the grief process is the hardest because the thing you want the most is to get the beloved back.  The grief and its intenisity signals your proximity to the person you miss.  You hold on to the grief because it is the placeholder for the person and who you were with them.

All this is the same when you are grieving the aftermath of sexual abuse, only there is no funeral, no one has died, what has died is the life you thought you had and the trust you had in the abuser.  The period of time following the revelation of C’s abuse was long and was by far the hardest grief I have ever experienced.  It was so rough it caused physical illness.

Now the stage we are in is different but when grief emerges it is so intense and focued that I am afraid that I am not doing enough to help my children to recover.  We ask why? a million ways, we search for acceptable answers to unaccaptable history.

I say all of this because last night was very hard.  We cried and mourned because we had watched movies from the time the girls were small until after the abuse was discovered and we all knew that these happy-looking scenes were a scrim for a dark mind and terrible predation.  How could he?  We will never have an answer.

And as I stay up very, very late with my two precious daughters I am haunted by all the other little children who have been abused and cry alone.

If you know me at all or if you have read a few of these blog entries, you probably know that I have been on a minor crusade (yes, crusade, all connotations intentional) against the sexual abuse of children and the devastating silence surrounding this abuse.

I want to thank you for helping me to heal, for helping my children to feel that there is a decent community of people in the world who care, for listening.

When experts talk about the grief cycle they talk about the need to talk about the loss.  You.  Whoever you are, have listened and I thank you with all my heart.

Please help to keep all children safe.  I know that sounds like a hyperbolic request.  So just try to keep one child safe at a time.  Everything counts.

Thank you and God bless you

Elea

but as it happened

chaos ensued

you sleep

like a normal person

and I marvel

that words can be a kind

of addiction

calling forth

sleeping beauty

I rake the dark ceiling

hoping for a glimpse

of the God of love

we have a tendency to accumulate

accolades or convictions

these are our badges

the trinkets we wave about

to prove

we are real

when in reality they are

like the trees killed for nothing

mashed into currency, identification, memos

incinerated as our great buildings crash

and fall

so close to Neil deGrasse Tyson

who still cannot hear Jesus

render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar

and what belongs to God

unto God

In the story of the centurion and Jesus in Matthew 8, the centurion says he is not worthy to have Jesus in his home but that he understands that Jesus has sufficient “command” over the situation to heal a dying man from a distance.

In fact neither time nor distance were or are obstacles for Jesus.  He is the commander and lord of them. 

This means that the requests (prayer means to ask something from an authority…) we make are not bound by time and space the way we appear to be.   I say appear because we are 1. eternal beings (whether we like it or not) and 2.  we have access to a powerful friend.

What do you ask a man who can save the world?

What do you ask Him today?