6 minutes to Ballinger, Texas I missed you. Not possessing the ability to stop all the clocks, I watched windmills instead, recording the flat, hot, windy stretch of road while the Catholic radio station came in so clear with words of uneven comfort. I picture you a Ghibli bride, birdcage veil like Jackie Kennedy, always dainty, smallest, sweetest bouquet of flowers held between your front two paws as you proceed toward our mutual Savior, unswerving in his gaze.
I have been writing regularly and publishing nothing. I would say I have had a crisis of words–too much of mine, not enough of His, so I have decided to return to my Remedy and try to stick close. I need an antidote to my parochialism and old wounds and a Balm in Gilead.
When Billy Graham died there was a minor brouhaha about a young woman who wished him fun in hell.
Whatever you or I may have thought about BG, he was an unabashed Eternalist. Stephen Hawking was not.
It is my belief that they both are now.
Which reminds me of a story…
A long time ago a rather counter-cultural day laborer was executed by the Romans apparently for some sort of political expediency.
His rag-tag followers were devastated (naturally), until a few days later when he came back from the dead and started appearing to people!!! (Rather supernaturally)
Although not initially to Thomas, a contemporary Aramaic friend of his, or Stephen Hawkins, a science-type from the 20th century B.C.E.
But after a bit,* he fixed this by showing up. For Thomas it came in the 20th chapter of the Good News of John. For Stephen it happened today.
Worship science all you want, or money or sex or power or fear.
But on the day we die we all turn into Eternalists…regardless of whether the science was every really on our side or not.
John 20, 21
*eight days
She has been a cloud, a curved white wave, a story from a picture, the daughter who won’t answer back, reminder of all I have lost, world is full of daisies, I could find one now, on hands and feet in the night. They are common things, hands and feet in the dark, looking for lost flowers, people we always knew we needed. One million daisies, little flower faces, pushed to rough angles by this lion’s wind, breathing us into impossible life.
When I tell you I found the old mushroom-colored sweatshirt which saw us through thick and thin you will know I am talking about the way the Romans used to have it done, long pole, wad of cloth, vinegar soaked as we raise it to the real hero, his naked pain, the way he eschews ordinary safety for a stretched-to-the-limits agony
I take the brush, add the cleanser, wipe it all down with an uneasy litany
Drab for color
Old for young
Plain for beautiful
Forgotten for remembered
He says
Me for you
Death for life
Life, everlasting.
According to His most ardent biographers, when Jesus was born he got a star, an angel choir, multiple prophetic and celestial intros, a visit from some prominent foreign astronomers, and an animal feed tray for a bed.
It seems like the divine side of the birth announcement for this kid was legit–angel choirs and all. But the human side was sub-par. The innkeeper could have let the pregnant girl use his digs. But he did not.
Easy, I suppose, to judge the inhospitable of Bethlehem for their general indifference to an infant King. Harder to face our own.
The question for each so-called believer in this tiny bundle of Infinite Light is–do you see Him? At the breakfast table or the DMV? In the bad driver or the white-collar criminal?
It is hard to see Jesus in us. We are often a selfish, short-sighted, venal bunch of sheep.
Sheep on a hill somewhere in the night.
Beneath a star.
In the presence of angels, so close to our King.
Worth repeating.
Worth putting on your refrigerator:
When I first found out that my adopted son had sexually abused children I was in shock. The hours and days that followed were filled with anger, pain, and terrible questions.
They were also filled with calls to the state to report him and forensic interviews.
I understood that I had to revise my view of my son–he was capable of unspeakable harm.
How do we handle stories of unspeakable harm? Not well. We handle them with avoidance, ostracism, excuses, and silence. We blame the victims.
Don’t. Don’t do these things to a crime victim. Do this instead:
Be there and listen. Victims of abuse are all around you. Most will not share their stories because they know if they do they will be viewed as contagious.
Abuse is not sui generis contagious. Ignorance is. Refrain from perpetuating any stereotypes about the abused or their families. Remember, they are the victims.
Explaining to a child how and why an older person would take their innocence is a heartbreaking conversation, but it starts with repair–
What I told my kids was this–sex is like driving a car, good but challenging and not for kids.
Kids should not have to deal with sex–either in advertising, media, a bikini culture, pornography, or abuse.
It is our job to protect them, and we can’t do it by keeping our heads in the sand.
And if they have been hurt by sexual exploitation it is our job to be there to heal what has been broken–the human heart.
In the months before I lost Veronica I refrained from listening to ordinary love songs. I remember those months too well–waiting in hope and fear.
I had so much faith. I knew–knew He would bring her back. It has been 14 years. 3 to go…
I have felt that fear so many times since–the fear of loss and grief and love.
Perfect love casts out all fear.
Imperfect love clings to the scarred feet of Perfect Love, praying for flat out miracles.
My father was a straight talker.
He was raised in a baptist church by the parent who attended, but he was also raised in the south during a time when it was hard to miss the hypocrisy (is it ever far from us?)
He walked away. When I first knew him he did not believe in God. Even when other members of our family became flamingly involved with Jesus, my dad stayed back.
He did not take the leap until a conversation with a fire-and-brimstone type who pointed out that his hereditary baptist background suggested that the alternative to the yoke of Jesus was a bit warm.
Warm apparently worked. I say this because I never really felt it was even necessary to bring hell into the conversation. Who needs to know they are escaping a one-way trip to a dump if the alternative is an all-expenses-paid trip to paradise?
Where are you headed?
And who or what is leading you there?
Mark 9:1 (NIV)
And he said to them, “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.”
The Bible is a crazy story. I am not sure I would trust anyone who wasn’t willing to admit that.
But then I think history is a crazy story. Herodotus? Stalin? A kamikaze wind thwarting Genghis Khan? Give me a break!
I seems to me that Jesus (who is Truth) says some stuff that might have been a little confusing.
It also seems like he says stuff that is hard to hear.
This one seems confusing. Huh? Taste death? Kingdom of God?
But then when you think about what he is saying it is…oh! Of course!
He is the King. They are looking at the kingdom.
Look at the King.
Don’t miss the kingdom.
Carrying Light 