Pleading With God

God, I don't understand.  I'm not sure what you want.  At times I think I know.  Other times I am afraid I do, but that I don't know how to do it.  Show me, Lord.  Tell me what you want and show me the way.  I'm not sure.  I don't know how to be me, or you.  You have the answer and the question both.  If you are telling me now, then I can't understand.  Maybe I don't want to.  Maybe you want too much.  Maybe you want what I cannot give.  Show me, Lord.  Help me trust you.  Tell me it is worthwhile and that you will be with me.  Then let it be enough.

The Temptation of Militancy

It is easy to be militant.  It is not difficult to be against.  But in so doing, nothing is accomplished except antagonism and further alienation.  Maybe there are times when threats of militancy may be helpful, but there has to be a time when the noise stops, when we try to hear and understand each other.

Preferred Method

There are those I am reluctant to talk to, afraid I will change them.  I feel I should be asking them questions, not offering answers.

Seeking Reconciliation

The father came out to both sons, both the prodigal and his brother.  He treated each with dignity, seeking to understand and care for them, asking that neither appear before him.  He initiated and sought to establish the reconciliation.  The limitation of neither son stood in his way.

How to Talk to Tax Collectors

It is, of course, a good thing that Jesus recognized the dignity of sinners and tax collectors, seeking them and sharing meals with them.  It also says something about Jesus that they were willing to accept his offer.  They must have recognized that his approaching them was not condescending and that he was hoping to find something in them as well as share with them what he had to say.

Mixed Message

Why say donation when you meant charge?

Running to Meet Love

It is possible to run from love.  But running to meet it is more in line with what we should be, since love is the natural state of this world.  It is our inheritance.

The Relevancy Game

We play the "relevancy" game.  We do what is "meaningful."  We know and use the "in" words.  We know and are seen with the "right" people.  Yet we are surprised when others shrug, or yawn, and walk away.  Maybe they do so because the game is just a game, a game in which the moves can become more important than what should have motivated them.

The Last Resort

For the woman troubled with hemorrhage, Jesus was a last resort.  She had tried everything else but it failed. Jesus was an after thought, and had there been anyone else to go to that is where she would have gone.  We have a lot in common with her.

Who to Trust

If we don't trust people, who else is there?

Letting Ourselves Be Carried Away

Reading of the deliverance of Daniel, you might wonder how Habacuck felt about this whole thing.  To him, it may have seemed the least bit dumb.  Maybe he thought there were better or more important things to be done, that his role in the drama might have been omitted in favor of something a bit more practical, something more in line with his dignity.  Perhaps he wondered why the angel hadn't grabbed someone else.  Surely there must have been a closer bowl of stew.

But that is not how God works.  He sometimes wants what is silly or looks so foolish.  Sometimes he asks what is unimportant or inconvenient, what we really don't want to do.  Yet, we have few alternatives.  Like Habacuch, we have to let ourselves be carried away.

Living (and Losing) the Gospel

Is it that people determined to live the Gospel are destined to become neurotic, or have they not understood the Gospel?

Lost in Scholarship

The message of resurrection was lost in a very profound discussion of exegetes and exegesis.  The scholarship seemed also a bit dated, but when one is talking only to himself it is not that great an oversight.

Accused of Holiness

Sometimes we seem afraid people will catch us at prayer, that they will accuse us of holiness.

Something Wrong

There is something wrong with the image of Church when people expressing hatred or prejudice expect their minister will agree.

We Belong In This World

In Acts, the disciples are asked why they are standing looking at heaven.  The looking and waiting will not make the Lord return.  The gazing upward in anticipation might in fact slow the process, and it is a suggestion applicable to all of us.  Looking up, or down, has little effect no matter how appealing it may appear.  Nor is waiting for revelation likely to produce one.  Scratching our heads is not much of a key.  What answers there are, are in the world around us.  This world is the one in which we live.  It is where we belong.

Because God Is Growing

God is growing and changing.  He is becoming "more God" than he used to be; and because he is, I am becoming "more me."

The Having and The Letting Go

There is a conflict between the truth that God is present in all things (the idea that creation is good and has been redeemed, and so should be enjoyed and celebrated) and the need to sacrifice (the notion that things are not really so good after all).  There may be no reconciling of the two unless we say God is present both in the possession and the lack, in the having and the letting go.

Doing Nothing

He was doing nothing, but felt he should be doing something.  So he did.  He made things worse.

Where Meaning Comes From

But it must have a meaning.
    It would be nice if it did.
Someone should know.
    You would think so.
I am sure God knows.
    Perhaps he does.
Then why doesn't he say?
    Why get involved?

This is not uncommon discussion on the meaning or value of life (or of anything else), as it bogs down in the assumption that the answer lies outside, when in truth it is - and always was - within.  And so it is yourself you must ask.

Proclamation and Coercion

Proclamation is not coercion.  Presenting a message and demanding its acceptance are different things.

More Than An Absence

In itself, virginity may mean little.  Some of the worst people any of us know could be virginal.  To make sense, or to acquire a value, it has to be more than the absence of something.  It should stand for or with something else, and maybe that is poverty.  Not a poverty that is only another negative virtue, a denial.  Rather it should be a poverty that gives and shares, an openness to others and an offering of the fullness of what we have.

Growing Apart

Because they worried about what they were entitled to, because they were concerned about what they should receive, they were less able to give.  They could not reach beyond themselves.  Because they could not come closer, they simply grew farther apart.

The Principles So Far

There are not that many principles, and that is probably as well.  I've tried to think what a few of them might be and so far all I've come to are these:

1. Things are what we call them.
2. We said it was your life because it is.
3. We have less control than we pretend.
4. Though there has been commentary and reformulation, there are not that many new ideas.
5. You can only offer.
6. There are degrees of behavior, but all are human and all are potentially our own, both the good and the bad.
7. The less evident, the more real.
8. The secret is that there are no secrets.
9. You have choices.
10. The game ends when you stop playing.

I'm not entirely sure all of these are actually principles, but they seem so far to be pretty true.

Too Real, But Here to Stay

As reality becomes too real, we may deny its presence.  But that doesn't make it go away.

Stick With the Miracles

Maybe they said, "Jesus, stick with the miracles.  People like them.  If you want to say those other things, just say them at home.  Why make anyone mad?"  I suppose he knew it without being told, that no one wanted to hear it all, that some might get angry, that they might try to stop him.  But he went ahead, even when his friends walked away and he was alone.  He believed it that much, so there was nothing else to do.

On Nonviolence

In discussing nonviolence they equated the ability to submit with the power to overcome.  They seemed to assume the timidity of the weak was the conviction of the righteous.  For nonviolence to succeed, it has to derive from belief actualized in willingness to suffer, should suffering follow from making known or acting upon what is believed.

Nonviolence is not weakness, but a type of strength.  It is conviction rather than timidity, and the cowardly haven't a right to claim it as their own.  It uses no force in the sense of violence or retaliation, applying instead a moral pressure that forces aggressors to acknowledge the inadequacy they mask with their own actions.  The degree and extent of violence does not make a position correct.  In like manner, the violence to which one is subjected does not make someone wrong, nor does it generate the need to respond in kind.

It is not suffering for the sake of pain.  That would be masochism and a failure to appreciate one's own dignity.  It is instead suffering in the name of a cause, value or belief which, while it makes the pain no less painful, renders it futile as a weapon against the truth of the belief.

To respond nonviolently is more difficult.  It does not always make the hurt less painful and there is no assurance that the aggressor will, even if he becomes aware of its futility, put aside his violence.  It is not an approach one chooses only because no weapon was available.  The conviction precedes the application.  It is for the peaceful person the only available option.  It is the belief and dedication that prevents the hurt from becoming degradation, and which transforms it into victory.

The Reasonableness of Disagreement

While we sometimes do so, there is no legitimate reason to assume those who disagree with us are acting in bad faith or for an evil intent.

Completing Our Creation

God is because he said he is.  He called himself into being by affirming himself, by deciding to be or acknowledging that he was, and he did so in the very beginning.  To a degree we have this same power, but unlike God are afraid or unable to use it.  We hesitate and are reluctant to reach into the depth of our personality, calling out the unique person living inside each of us.  To do so would complete our creation.

Make Sense of The Trinity

When we think of God's revelation of himself, one of the ambiguous aspects is the Trinity, an expression of God's being one and at the same time diverse without lessening the significance of either aspect.  It is a way to describe indescribable depth and fullness.  It is a manner of saying Godness is equally manifest in multiplicity while remaining oneness.  And so we say God is Father, Son, and Spirit; that he is creation as it comes to be; that he is salvation both in act and in its day-to-day realization; and he is the sustaining presence making actual what is not yet.  He is and is becoming, first and last as well as here and now.

He is a oneness composed of an unlimited possibility of expressions of facets which compose, cause, and are the unity.  It is how it must be since God, like all who live, is made up of differences brought together in a life giving act of reconciliation.

In his person, there is a joining or marriage of the opposites and ambiguities that make them entire, giving them a wholeness they could not have apart from their union.  God's personality is a singularity that constantly changes, forming itself into itself as it touches its own diversity.  It could not be as full in any of its aspects as it is in its coming together.