CHRISTIAN AT THE MOVIES

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about the movies since it is Oscar season.

There have been a lot of Christian movies that were duds just because they tried so hard to be evangelical. I'm thinking of the The Hiding Place and some Billy Graham movies I was forced to watch at church when I was a kid.

But in reality, there are so many riveting stories that are about great and nefarious Christians. Below is a short list of my favorites.

Best Christian Jerk

If there were a category like this at the Oscars, then the winner hands down would be the Reverend Abner Hale (Max von Sydow) in Hawaii.

Brother Hale just doesn't get it. He marries the lovely Jerusha Bromley (Julie Andrews) and whisks her away from home in New England to start a mission in Hawaii. His is a cold, pious heart for Jesus. Hers is a warm, loving heart. Jerusha's former lover, the dashing Captain Rafer (Richard Harris), was right in the end when he accused Brother Hale of killing his wife.

Honorable Mention:  The Priest and the Baptist preacher in Needful Things

Worst Beating in a Christian Role

Jesus's mauling, definitely, in The Passion of the Christ is savage. The movie never explains why the Romans beat the living crap out of Jesus. I guess we were all supposed to know already. If only the gospel had been as gratuitous as the brutality.

Best Virgin Mary

Olivia Hussey in Jesus of Nazareth takes top billing. I haven’t seen all the Jesus movies. I cannot recall the other Mother’s of God, but Olivia Hussey brought the same sweet innocence to the screen as Mary that she gave to us as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s other classic.

           

Best Judas

Carl Anderson in Jesus Christ Superstar. Anderson sang better than other Judases. It always bothered me that a black man was cast as the supreme traitor, but it might have been deliberate if for no other reason than to engender repugnance in viewers for its suggestion of racism. Repugnance towards Judas is what the gospel writers would have us feel. However, I loved Anderson’s sympathetic performance. For days I felt sad for “Poor old Judas....So long Judas…”

Best Jesus

I loved Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ. He played the haunted Jesus conceived by Nikos Kazantzakis in his wonderful book. The gospel is in this very human Jesus.

            Honorable Mention:  Captain Christopher Pike in King of Kings and Max Von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told. I didn’t imagine Jesus’s eyes were so blue.

Best Jesus You’d Ever Want to Cuddle With

Aslan, definitely, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Best Near Jesus

Brian in Life of Brian is a hilarious depiction of just another first century messiah. It admonishes us to always look on the bright side of life while asking  the immortal question:  What have the Romans ever done for us?

Best Preacher in a Male Role

Burt Lancaster was unforgettable in Elmer Gantry. Although the movie did not underscore the hypocrisy and fraud of revivalism as mightily as Sinclair Lewis did in his disturbing novel, it stands on its own as an important work of art.

Lancaster won an Oscar for his performance, as did Mrs. Partridge, Shirley Jones, who won best supporting actress as the salacious Lulu Bains.

This is one of my favorite all time movies. I still can’t believe it lost out to The Apartment for Best Picture in 1960. The gospel is in it. You do not have to look very hard to see it if you look past the gilded evangelical fervor.

Best Preacher in a Female Role

Jean Simmons in Elmer Gantry. She was simply lovely as Sister Sharon Falconer.

            Honorable Mention:  Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking. Sarandon shows what it means to live out the words, “I was in prison and you visited me.”

Best Satan in a Starring Role

            Once again, Max von Sydow as Mr. Gaunt in Needful Things. This movie, based on Stephen King’s terrific novel, reveals satanic logic in all of its steely discord.

Best Pure Soul

            John Coffey, spelled like the drink only different, in The Green Mile is simply remarkable as a character too innocent for our slimy world.  The story creates in us a yearning for godly magic to be real.  We shall miss you: Michael Clarke Duncan.

Best Christian Horror Movie

Frailty starring Matthew McConaughey cannot be written about without spoiling the surprise.  Watch it and be amazed.

Best Christian Science Fiction Movie

Planet of the Apes (with Charlton Heston) shows how stupid apes can be when they believe in creationism.

Best Christian Action Movie

With ship wrecks and chariot races, Ben Hur is undoubtedly the most exciting Christian movie ever. It stars Charleton Heston as the scion of a rich Jewish family who falls out of favor with those testy Romans. It also stars Jesus’ hands in some of the most touching scenes ever shown in cinema. Indeed, there is also a touch of horror commingled with redeeming pathos among lepers.

Best Christian Movie of All Time

It was nominated in so many categories, but only won Best Cinematography. Visually stunning and artistically beautiful, The Mission tells the story of the Jesuit Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) and his convert, the dangerous fratricide Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro). They attempt to rescue a remote tribe in South America from Portuguese slavers in the 18^th Century.

Father Gabriel resists those dirty rotten slavers the way we imagine Jesus would resist them. Rodrigo Mendoza struggles between following his priest or following his past. It is one of the most remarkable movies I have ever seen in my life. The oboe playing throughout the movie touches heaven.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Blessings…

HOW TO REJECT BIBLE BASED BIGOTRY

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about bigotry.

I heard on the radio today that two states, one being Georgia, has legislation brewing that would legalize bigotry once again. 

This time, it would be in the name of Jesus as if Georgia would be doing Jesus a favor if this law passed.

It seems, according to the congressman I heard defending his silly law, there is a burden being borne by people of faith. It is a huge burden akin to the load of care that Jesus would take upon himself if we would swap yokes with him.

What is this burden?

It is the burden of being a fundamentalist (emphasis on mental) who has to sell food, groceries, clothes, or anything else to gay people.

Sorta like the burden white people endured when they had to sell food, groceries, clothes, or anything else to African-Americans.

Oh, the agony!  Bigotry does weigh heavy on the heart. Bigotry weighs even heavier on any nation whose laws lug its load of care throughout the society.

Evangelicals and fundamentalists have forgotten that citizens of the United States already clobbered each other over this conversation. They were on the wrong side of history then, just as they are on the wrong side of history now.

Our constitution forbids the establishment of religion or the prohibition of the free exercise thereof.

Bigotry may have exercised freely with religion in the past, but in this country we say, "Never again!"

Besides, bigotry is not the gospel. It is Biblical however from the curse of Ham to the persecution of Jews who inter-married with Babylonians.

The good news is that God loves us all without prejudice. So all my brothers and sisters who are fundamentalists by choice, who truck in hate, and who delude themselves that it’s sin they despise,  I urge you to repent.

Take your bigotry and stuff it inside a white sheet where it belongs. Then burn it.

That is how to reject Bible based bigotry.

Blessings...

HOW TO HAUL A BUCKET OF HOLE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about emptiness.

Sometimes what happened to me recently happens to us all.  Loved ones whom we haven't seen for weeks, months, even years come to call.  That old familiar feeling of family and enjoyment arises as if no time had passed between visits.

That's when family is at its best, when it's welcome and mutual fondness is experienced as naturally as a breath.

Then there is departure.  

Today, I led two cars of family members from our home to the Interstate that stretches that distance that is seven hours away.  I pointed to the turn that would lead them home.  I waved as they exited and watched them wave in my rear view mirror.

I waved and waved until I could no longer see them.

I had been listening to the Beetles when "Eleanor Rigby" began.  I turned the song off and drove quietly.  I longed for all sound to cease so I could silently measure the bucket of hole I felt weighing me down inside my chest.  

You never really know when you will see your family again. Goodbyes are never a lot of fun.  

That feeling of emptiness that follows an unwanted goodbye is akin to the "dark night of the soul" written by church mystics.  I have known such nights.  The sense of God's departure can be lonelier than waking from a dream of solitude within a desolate room of one's own making.

My intellect would never allow me to believe that God abandons any of us for any moment of our lives.  That would be impossible since our very being is grounded in God.  

That hole, the one that seems devoid of God, that feels as vast as God, can be endured just as goodbyes can be endured.   

Love transcends the distance of space when loved ones have gone home.  It reaches across space and time until reunion happens again.

In the same way, faith knows that no void truly exits in God. It is our greatest illusion.  Love transcends that distance by filling it even if our hearts are not feeling it.  

I drove a while, taking a long way home without a hurry, hauling my emptiness out of the city and onto an island.  

Cool air blew into my car window.  Sunshine radiated the morning as if it emanated from the ground as well as the sky.  

A few miles away from home, I clicked on my CD player.  The Beetles sang of forsaken Eleanor Rigby who numbered among all the lonely people in the world and reclusive Father McKenzie who wiped her death from his hands.   

I played it over and over until I arrived home.  Tomorrow, I will not be sad. 

Blessings...  

A NEW METAPHOR

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about metaphors.

Many of the metaphors about the gods have to do with war.  In Hinduism Arjuna looks over a field of battle and bemoans the slaughter of his kinsmen at the hands of one another.  The man driving his chariot to war tells him that the battle is an illusion.  Arjuna realizes that the man is the god Krishna.  

Allah and Yahweh are imagined as deities who win battles in heaven and on earth. 

Gods are also imagined as destroyers.  Shiva, Yahweh, and Allah have dished out lots of destruction.

There are other metaphors that come closer to how we experience our God of love:
God the creator, the lawgiver, the preserver, sustainer, and the liberator.  

God the father is a metaphor.  God is love?  Definitely a metaphor.

One of my personal favorites is providence.  Our founding fathers wrote a lot about that one.

God is a personification of being-itself; hence the ultimate metaphor.  

Think about Jesus.  He is the prince of peace, the lamb of God, the son of God--all metaphors.  Bread of life?  Metaphor.  The Way?  Metaphor.  The Truth?  Metaphor.  The Life?  Metaphor.  The Redeemer.  The Savior.  The Lord.  The door.  A light unto my path.  A lamp.  Messiah.  Christ.  Count 'em up.  

My favorite metaphor of Jesus experiences him as the heart of God.

Are there new metaphors for God being generated today?

How about the Internet?  I love the Internet.  Information is so easily accessed. 

Did you know that you can “youtube” just about any classic and hear someone read it?  I fell asleep last night listening to Paradise Lost.  The last time I did that was when I read it during the daytime.

So far I have not found any poem, short story, book, cantata, sonata, or symphony that is not free to hear on the Internet.  Indeed, some of the readers are famous like Anthony Hopkins who reads "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

James Earl Jones, Christopher Walken, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee read "The Raven."  Mr. Price blunders a little.

Benedict Cumberbatch reads "She Walks In Beauty in the Night" with that resonating baritone voice he possesses.  Although the short novel is edited, Patrick Stewart reads "A Christmas Carol".  

It is wondrous indeed to me to have so much fine literature within earshot.

Other surprises present themselves in unexpected links.  After listening to Lord Byron’s poetry last night, I stumbled onto Charles Bukowski’s “Hell Is a Lonely Place” which was sublimely dreary and tragic.  I had never heard it before.   

And art?  Google any painting, sculpture, or building by name and there it is under the "Images" link.

I can look up anything and find good information about it.  There's no word I know of that I cannot find the definition, no name that I cannot find a biography, and no puzzle that I cannot find a solution. 

The Internet is so rich!

Has anyone thought of the Internet as a metaphor of God?  It occurred to me that God has always been as accessible.

This relatively new thing--this Internet--serves up knowledge, information, and art everlastingly.  So it is with God.  We just don't need a PC or a cell phone to initiate access.

God has been here since God created time.  How could it be otherwise since we move and have our being in God?   We are closer to God than we know.  Maybe God is so familiar that we do not notice.

The Internet as vast, boundless, and invisible makes an interesting metaphor as our ground of being.  Let's have fun with this.

Log on to divnity.  Every single thing that has being is a link so click on it.  The divine is so rich!

Blessings...

A COMMANDMENT FOR US ALL

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about the Decalogue.  I condensed them below for your perusal.

You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make a graven image.
You shall not take the name of Yahweh in vain.
Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it separate.
Honor your father and mother.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness.
You shall not covet.

The first three pertain to God.
One pertains to our parents.
The rest pertain to being moral in any society.

Only one is a gift to us all.  Do you see it?  It is such a lovely imperative from God through Jewish people.

It is the one commanding us to stop working and rest.  

Set aside a day of rest.  Stop working.  Chill out.  Walk away. Don't do  it.  Trust God.  Rest.  

We should all take care to obey that one for it will make us happy.  

So take a day off.  Rest...one day a week...thus says the Lord.

Blessings...

PARABLE OF THE LOST BOOK

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about loving what is lost.

There was a teacher who possessed many books. He loved each and every one. He wanted to read them all more than once.

He began reading a classic that was more than a thousand pages long. After several nights in bed, he read over three hundred pages.

One day, he decided that he loved the book so much that he would take it with him.

He read in his car while he waited for red lights to turn green. He read at the school where he worked. He read during lunch. He read in the post office while he waited to buy stamps.

When he went to bed that night, he discovered that his book was lost. This was quite distressing, but not too much since he probably left it in his car.

After he woke up the next day, the teacher searched his car, but it was not there. He searched all the rooms where he worked, but it was not there either.

His heart sank. With little hope he searched his car again to no avail. The weekend came and went. For two days he was without his book.

The teacher did not want to start reading another one. He wanted to finish the book he had lost. If he did not find it, then he would have to buy another copy.

However, he had already drawn the book into his heart by underlining words to savor, highlighting passages to ponder, and scribbling marginalia to converse within its many pages.

 As luck would have it, during his Monday morning drive to work, the teacher remembered his visit to the post office. So on his lunch break, he drove there to see if he had left it there.

On the way, he nearly talked himself into not bothering. It had been two days since he last visited. No one would remember him.

As he stood in a long line, the teacher watched two postal employees working behind a counter with six empty stations. One of workers was a man who had sold a book of stamps to the teacher.

It would be a long wait. He had no book to read. So he began looking around in case someone set it out on a counter.

The one thing the teacher had going for him was that he lived in a culture that would sell a mediocre book for twenty-five dollars and a classic for five. If his book were set out so anyone could take it, the odds were good that the book's thickness and classic sounding title might discourage them.

Minutes passed. He did not see his book anywhere. Another postal worker joined the other two. The queue dwindled a little faster.

Suddenly, a man standing in line began to complain about how slow the post office workers were. He grumbled that he paid too much in taxes for lousy service.

He was a short man with a wreath of brown hair that wrapped around his bald head from ear to ear. He looked around smugly at the other people standing in line as if he expected words or nods of approval. 

Only the teacher spoke. The teacher told him that he was being rude. He said that he might deliver his own mail if he did not like paying taxes.

The teacher said, "Don’t want to deliver your own mail?  Then you might vote for candidates who will fund the U.S. Postal Service so they can afford to hire more people to handle the mail."  

No one else said a word. Everyone in line looked at the man to see what he would say.

He did not disappoint them with silence. He said, "If you like paying taxes so much, why don't you give them an extra ten dollars."

The teacher said, "I am not here to make a purchase or drop off any mail. I might have left my copy of Les Miserables here last Friday, and I want it back."

The postal worker who had sold the teacher his stamps said, "Is it a big gray book?"

"Yes, sir."

"I called out to you when you left it, but you were out the door too fast. I've got it right here."

He turned to open a large, red tool box. The teacher's book was there atop notebooks, magazines, purses, and many other items.

He held it out for the teacher to take.

"Thanks," he said.

“Your welcome.”

As he passed the other workers, the teacher saw they were grinning from ear to ear. Their faces mirrored the delight he felt as he carried what he lost home.

Blessings...

LAST MAN ON BEACH

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about solitude.

My job makes me envy monasteries.  How wonderful to live in a sacred outpost like monks do.  A vow of silence, service to the community, and daily contemplation of God's mysterious being sounds pretty good to me right now.

I work in hell.  Currently, I am working not for a public school, but for a private educational company that operates the alternative school for a larger school district in the city where I live. 

The company is run by amateurs who manage all employees with a heavy hand. They use threats, intimidation, and punitive evaluations to motivate their employees to stay on top of the insurmountable land fill of paper work.  The company does not encourage best practices. Instead, they have ensconced systemic failure into their curriculum. 

The students are abusive and bullying.  They also abuse and bully each other.   Teachers endure constant hostility every day.  The level of profanity hurled at each of us is more than a normal sailor could bear.

Parents offer little or no help.  They are the ones who taught their children how to talk to adults.  Who could reasonably expect them to “homeschool” lessons in civility and respect now?

Alas, I find that mean old snake, my volatile temper, slithering inside my mind with a vengeance.  Anger has dominated my emotions every day since last August.

Why do I not quit?  Turnover in this company is nearly 100% every year.  The only reason it is not 100% is because four of the original employees who started with the company in this city remained for another year.  I am included among the four.

To be honest, I have been searching for another job.  I would sing the Johnny Paycheck song were I offered something, anything that was not minimum wage.  

I would teach girls in Afghanistan if I did not have to leave my family to do it.  I would convene class inside the sun if it were not so far away and technology allowed my students and me to sip an ice cold soda during class.

But if I could, I would love to swap places with a brother or sister who has sequestered themselves for the glory of God and see how their devotion works itself out where I work.

None of these things are realistic for me.  However, a friend suggested that I walk on the beach after work.  It was a good idea.  I don't know why I never did it before.  The beach is not so far from where I live. 

So I went today.  Suddenly, I found myself in solitude.  I had the beach all to myself.  I was so utterly alone that I thought about Vincent Price in "The Last Man on Earth."  For half an hour I might just as well have lived in a world devoid of all human existence except mine.

The cold wind blew hard over the waves.  I wrapped myself tightly within an emergency blanket since my coat dangled from a hanger within my closet at home. 

Tuffs of foam skittered across the sand.  The ones that stuck to the shore fluttered so that the great number of them appeared to be a huge organism trembling in the wind.  Not a bird, not a crab, not a human in sight--just waves and foam.

My feet crunched upon tiny shells.  The everlasting sweep of the sea filled my ears.  I heard no cars, no hostility, only salty nature pounding earth.

I walked over places in the sand where people had scribbled messages.  One was an arrow pointing to the ocean.  The message said, "Gold is here."

I did not see that one so well.  At first, I thought it said, "God is here."

Of course, God was all that filled my mind.  But I refused to go mystical on myself. I walked, letting the vast Atlantic work its magic just as it did for Whitman at Paumanok. 

I recited, "The Raven," as madly and loudly as I could against the ocean's undulating din.  

"Is there?  Is there?  Balm in Gilead?  Tell me truly I implore."

WELL!  IS THERE?

"Tell this soul with sorrow laden if within the distant Aiden, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore."

WILL IT?

No answer.  Just the sea and me.  I would have loved to have heard a word on the question of eternity.  A resounding or still, small “yes” would have emboldened me to endure whatsoever misery the world required of me.  But nothing indubitable is promised us.

I carried on through thicker sands away from the waves' reach as the time and duration of my walk wound to a halt.

Blessings...

HEARD AT CHURCH

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about how rotten life is.  

Our associate pastor, Reverend Lauren Colwell, opened her homily with a discussion about this year's Academy Award nominated movies.  

Everyone who knows her knows that she is a movie enthusiast.  So am I.  I love movies more than I love watching football games, and for me, that is saying something.

Reverend Colwell is right.  My wife and I saw Gravity and Blue Jasmine.  The latter I blogged about earlier.  We also saw Twelve Years a Slave.  Just the other night we viewed Captain Phillips.  Before that, my wife saw Dallas Buyer's Club with some friends.  

All of the movies this year are about terrible offerings served up by life.

Now, it's my opinion that the nominated movies are exceptionally good this year.  I hope I'm not writing that because my world view is basically bleak.

Without divulging whether or not Bruce Dern's character received the million bucks that he journeys to collect, Reverend Colwell spoke a lot about Nebraska.

I've been wanting to see it--now more than ever.  

The theme of her sermon was "Choose Life."  These movies with their despairing characters tempt us into believing that death is the underlying power that drives reality.

Indeed, we know that among people of faith Pollyannas thrive.  They believe that God wakes up every morning just to keep their way smooth and uncluttered with obstacles.

However, it is more Christian to acknowledge that the trials of Job await us all.  Sorrows are our lot in life.  Death be our inescapable fate.

Ancient Hebrews believed that God blessed the nation if they obeyed Torah and God punished the nation if they did not. As it turned out, Israel and Judah never seemed to enjoy prosperity for very long.  They were clobbered by any invading army that came along.

This Deuteronomic Theory of History, that the bad things that happen to nation, and a person, are a direct punishment for disobedience came under serious doubt after the Babylonian Captivity.  

After the Jewish people returned to Judah from Babylon there arose two movements:  the Apocalyptic Movement and the Wisdom Movement.

The Apocalyptic Movement preaches that the world is too unclean.  Gentiles violate the holy city.  They are on top.  God's chosen people are on bottom.  It’s a dirty, rotten world.

Only God can fix this mess; therefore, God will send a conquering hero to set things kosher again.

The other movement was the Wisdom Movement.  It is represented in the Jewish Bible in books like Job, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs.  

Wisdom says the world is what it is.  The world is God's world.  It's good and bad.  Men and women are virtuous and malevolent.  God blesses us when we trust God.

Jesus preached that our God of love wants us to bring about God's rule in this world. His message fits more aptly with the Wisdom Movement than the Apocalyptic Movement.  

Yes, the world disgusts us with how wicked people can be.

Yes, sorrow and death are inescapable.  

Yes, life stinks.

Yes, God wants us to see the good imbued in all creation.  

That is what I heard in church today.

So let us never despair, or if we do, let us wait for God to uplift us to that place where love and joy can follow healing.

Blessings...

A QUESTION THAT REKINDLES

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  Let's think about sin.  I gave up on sin long ago.  Having been raised in the Protestant tradition which proclaims that we are all fallen short of God's perfection, I learned that there was not a whole lot I could do about sin.  

Indeed, I am a great sinner.  I have no reason to ever believe that I can lord my way of life over anyone else. I can never say without falling down and laughing at myself that I know indubitably any answers to questions concerning God or how to make life sensible.

Like everyone else, I scratch and claw my way through the mettle ground of life.  Just by sheer luck alone, I make it through a day without wanting to retaliate with a clanging chain of unkind words.

Any who would emulate Jesus knows better than to be mean even when it is impossible to be kind.

Of course, I was raised to believe that sin is sinning, that is, sin is manifest in certain behaviors being deemed offensive to God. 

If only it were that easy.  I miss the days when I believed that piety was all God required of me. 

Cussing, drinking, dancing, playing cards, going to movies, going to R rated movies, wearing pants if you're a woman or a girl, listening to rock n roll, smoking weed would be a convenience now were I to measure my relationship to God by them.

Now, that I’m older, I’m too tired and busy to have the energy for all those pseudo-sins…except the pants of course, which do not apply to me.

The only behaviors that are offensive to God’s love are violence and neglect of our fellow humanity.  They violate our commitment to follow the golden rule.  They violate our commitment to obey the commandments urging us to love God and every single Homo sapiens on earth, even the jerks and the dummies.

There I go, being a jerk, and who's to say I'm not the biggest fool on this planet too?

What is sin, but that fog of life that keeps us from seeing our God of love through the eyes of faith.  This blindness affects how we see our fellow human beings.

There have been times in my life, and there are times in my life, when I am tempted to believe that I am not worth a hickory nut.  I imagine God is as displeased with me as I am.

I suffer from a chronic inability to love well.  My back bends beneath skies thundering with hostility, wrath, anxiety, and a sense of being lost with no takers in sight.

Then, I read these words:  "Come to me all of you who are struggling and burdened.  I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls."

These words, a salve everlasting that heals those places where sin sorely besets us, shoot straight out of our God of love’s heart.  

For I have managed to fumble and bumble my way through life.  I cannot think of a time in my life when I made any plans or set any goals that I worked toward.  I forsook the way of success which our culture proclaims is the all encompassing, smartly attired aim of life. 

I've always loved that spontaneity I lived, which has been the modus operandi of my life, but it has also irritated the hell out of me.  

Indeed, I envy planners and purveyors of preparation.  I once knew a man at the university I attended, a freshman like myself.  He wanted to be a dentist.

 After class, he went to the library.  I went to the Baptist Student Union and played spades for hours on end.  

When I left Chattanooga to attend seminary in San Francisco, it was not for the purpose of becoming a church scholar.  I wanted to venture away from the South.  

The same thing happened just before I moved to Atlanta.  I was living in San Juan Capistrano, California at the time when my best friend and church buddy asked me, "Why don't you move here?"  

I said, "Okay," and a week later I found myself living in the city where my favorite NFL and MLB teams played.  Atlanta was a lot of fun until I moved away.

My life has been a pick up and go kind of existence.  Wherever I am, I take long walks.  I talk to God.  I attempt to answer the question that God asks us all every time.  It is the same question Adam and Eve had to answer.  

"Where are you?"

"Right here, wondering where to go next."

"Don't fret.  I've got you covered."

“That’s just great.  Now what?”

“Keep living.  Keep talking.  I’ll listen.  You listen too.”

Adam and Eve’s question rekindles our relationship every time.  Especially when sin’s haze mystifies my every path.

Blessings…

150 AND COUNTING

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I salute the few of you who are reading this blog.

Yesterday, I wrote post number 150, which is a mile marker of sorts.  Thank you so much for being here with me.  I hope as more readers arrive that my inspiration increases grace in your lives. 

This first year has been all about discovery.  I wanted to discover if I have the wherewithal to write everyday about our God of love.  

Writing has never been a challenge.  Life is what tasks me. Life’s encroachment on my time is the unsurprising truth unveiled to me.

Like everyone else in this country I work hard and find myself wanting to fall asleep when I get home rather than write.  That’s because I am a schoolteacher.

No one works harder than a schoolteacher these days.

However, I am happy to know that no matter how weary I am, words pour out of my fingers and drench my keyboard.  

This blogging time is essentially my quiet time where I proclaim to our unsuspecting world the lifelong love I've tendered toward that mysterious Being whose presence ever remains irresistible.

How do we love God except by offering our talents?  

It has been said that the key to career happiness is to get paid doing what we already love to do.

God happiness happens when we give to God a portion of what we love to do every day.  

If I loved to paint, I would never cease imagining rainbows and celestial mansions on canvas.  

If I loved to sing, as I do, but with a voice that elevates those who hear it, I would serenade the world with repertoire of timeless hymns and secular songs of joy, love, sadness, longing, and life.

If all I loved to do was to tie knots, and I was really awesome doing it, then I would twist such amazing tangles, hitches, and splices for fun; yet make an offering of dedicated ropes arrayed with such Gordian complexity and beauty that admirers would be bound mystically to God in my art.

All I have is what I am doing right now.  I've written millions of words mainly about God in my lifetime:  in ink and in photons.  This blogging is a Godsend for me.  I worship.  I share…with those of you who take time to read it.

What a beatitude this is for me to live!

Blessings...

HEARD AT CHURCH

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

Last Sunday, I enjoyed the distinct pleasure of reading Isaiah 58: 1-9a to my church.  That passage needs a voice seething with scorn in order to proclaim its eternal message.  I tried to pull that off.  

The reasons for Yahweh's indignation are good reasons. 

Workers are oppressed.  Poor people are starving.  Men are violent. 

Jews are fasting as if everything is just peachy with Yahweh, but they are playing poker in a wind tunnel.  

I hate fasting.  I can't think of anything more wretched than not having anything to eat, unless it is not having anything to eat by choice.  

I have fasted three times in my life.  Once I refrained from eating for two days.  I swore I would wind my esophagus into a Sherman bow tie before I would ever go again without breakfast, lunch, supper, and occasional snacks from dawn 'til dusk.    

Focusing on God did not happen.  Nor did I experience a release from sin or any measurable time of extraordinary goodness.  All I could think about was making it to the end of the fast and being inside a Krystal restaurant when it happened. 

Imagine how lousy I'd feel if I had learned that my fast was a waste of my devotion because I was a self righteous prick who was blind to true righteousness!

In Sunday School, we read Mark 7:1-23.  In it, Jesus tears into some temple professionals for criticizing his disciples who had not been washing their hands before eating.  

Now, this hand cleaning has nothing to do with sanitation.  Neither Jesus nor anyone else as far as we know had the first clue about germs.  This has everything, however, to do with being kosher. 

Jesus made his famous distinction between what is clean and what is defiled.  He preaches a different way of being kosher.  Being clean, being unclean, being pure, being defiled--all these have to do with being kosher.  

A leper was not kosher.  Touching a menstruating woman was not kosher.  Touching a non-Jew was not kosher.  When something or someone is not clean,  what do you do with them?

If it's you, and you are Jewish, you purify yourself according to purification rituals.  If it's you and you are a leper, you put the hell away from all the clean people....scurvy knave!

Who cares about that empty hole of anguish you carry inside you every day you live and are reminded that you stink?  

Apparently, according to Jesus, God cares.  Purification rituals do not make us clean in God's eyes.  Only love does that.

Indeed, cleanliness is next to kindness.  It is all about how we treat people...people!

In the gospel, Jesus offers a list of sins that is similar to other lists in the Christian Bible.  Jesus probably did not rattle off any such list.  

His spirit is a lousy context for condemnation.  Jesus preached a new way of being pure, not an old way of saying we are garbage.

It is a worthless pursuit of godly worship when we fast, give money, attend services regularly, picket funerals, and refrain from pleasure while at the same time believing in our hearts that people are trash. 

If we do not love, then faith is a mere self serving psychological trick.  

In his sermon, my pastor quoted a writer who said that the world would end if there were no Christians.  I concur completely.  The world needs the good news that our God of love is real and does care.

Our light as Christians may be fading from the world.  Why?  Over the centuries we have preached righteousness. Historically, that means being right is more important than being love in the world.

Recall that people of faith have murdered or despised other people of faith for the sake of orthodoxy or “right doctrine.” 

Being right is impossible.  We always approximate accuracy in just about anything we do.  

However, being love aims higher and deeper.  Being love heals and gives refreshment.   Our faith has always been about being love, not being right. 

The self righteous hijacked Christianity early on.  Among followers of the Way who loved, a few annoying prigs sowed discord at first until they had the might of Rome behind their righteousness.  

If we Christians had been all about being love, our history would be glowing and our integrity would be unassailable.

Let us reclaim love or Christianity will be indexed just a few alphabet letters away from paganism in the history books.

Let us transform our righteousness.  Doctrines are private intellectual tools for worship anyway, not stones to throw at dissenters.  

Let us live a righteousness that happens at any moment when our God of love unconditionally embraces other people through our lives.  Let forgiveness and acceptance be experienced through us as refreshments…you know…grace.

Blessings...