open eye
i open
to see
the world
around me
i see
as
eye see
the things
that spin
and walk
the things
that live
that talk
and
i wonder
am eye blind
can i see
can eye see me
or do eye dream
of what I am 

the lights in the window
are red and yellow
stars of another world
hidden plainly and overlapping
this old old air
while ghosts of baristas work
diligent shadows beneath
edgy in three dimensions
and me without my glasses
it keeps them flat
without distinction
a world apart
that gets brighter in the dark 

do do do do do do do
you must
do do do do do do do
but…
do do do do do do do
he does not do do do
as we do do do do do
then he does not not not
but…
who are you you you
that you do not do do do
as we do do do do do
I…
I do as I do
and what I do
is different from you
but I do as much
as you you you you

Well…they’re not freaks but their ability to find even the smallest of things no matter where it is hidden is definitely freakish.

I lost the television remote control yesterday.  I should say my son lost it and after an hour of searching the entire house (it felt like we searched the entire house) and yelling at each other we gave up and decided watching TV was too much work and settled into other, less cumbersome, mouse-oriented activities.

This morning my daughter came downstairs as she does each morning and after prepping for school she spent about 20 seconds looking in the normal remote control hiding spots and then beelined to some weird obscure place and what does she pull out – the remote.

This is both cool and slightly frightening.

I have witnessed this preternatural feminine skill many times over my life and have never understood it. Women have a knack for finding things that is hardwired into them that the average man just seems to lack.

Thankfully women have yet to turn this power to evil and have for the most part remained reasonably altruistic with their abilities. If men had this ability we would easily sell the skill as a service or turn it into some form of get-rich-quick scheme.

I believe that there is balance in the universe and as such there must be an opposing, equally freakish skill set to balance out this female superpower. You know what it is right? It didn’t take me long to realize that men have an astounding ability to lose things, just as incredible as the bloodhound gift women have only opposite. We are the Solomon Grundy to the female Superman (I know it is awkward but go with it).

If you need something lost just give it to a man. Heck I have lost things almost before I was given them. Some men are even capable of losing their glasses while they are on their head. Don’t even get me started about the fridge. Only men can lose an entire four litre jug of milk in a 3×6 foot box.

I once spent 20 minutes ranting and raving about who stole my keys only to realize they were in my hand the whole time…this is a seriously amazing talent offset only by the feminine ability to find things.

In this sense men are just as remarkable as women. As men we spend a good deal of time helping out the second law of thermodynamics by unintentionally creating a good deal of entropy while women spend just as much time coming along using their skills to do the opposite.

People are really incredible when you think about it. Sure women are freakish and scary but, I suppose when you stop and think about it – men are equally freakish thus fulfilling the law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Of course there are always exceptions to every rule but you get the idea.

Jesus is a suit,
fine pressed Italian
sharp creases for a sharp look
Jesus is the best pair of leather shoes
polished like glass
a crisp linen shirt and silk tie
that I put on in the morning
to look my best when I go out
into the daunting day
tailored to fit me perfectly

when I get fat
I let out the seams (a little)
and when I get home
I can take him off
hot and itchy, uncomfortable to wear
the whole day through
Jesus is a suit
I can hang in my closet
to keep him safe
until I need to wear him again
at all the best occasions 

we’ll bar our doors
and hide inside ourselves, ourselves
we’ll cover up
safe ‘neath the iron walls
interior dark spaces we have delved
we’ll sing no songs
for fear the world is listening close
we’ll shut our ears
locked in the dark as shadows we’ll pose
we’ll lay ourselves on cold stone
and cross our arms upon our breast
we’ll be lulled to sleep
by the dying beat within our dying, sighing chest

and we’ll lose the flavour and the promise of the open air
screaming till the fabric of our lives is a tragic smiling tear
chanting this, this is our lived life right now
and this, this is the ending ember with the last lost glow

till we go down
but we’re already down
still we’ll go down

Do you ever wish you could buy your kids the world?

Today is one of those days for me. For various reasons I have allowed myself to be dragged into a silly dark place. A place I shouldn’t be on Father’s Day. I put too much stock in the material. It seems to be the kind of thing you do when you grow up with little…you put too much value on the material.

I know that my kids love me and that this love transcends the material but philosophical knowledge does not always help to take away feelings of inadequacy when the culture around us bombards them with deep desires for the best of the best. I fall prey to it too…I want the same things. 

Sometimes I wish things were simpler. I wish there were no social or cultural pressures weighing upon them but this is not reality. My desire to shelter them from the world for as long as I can conflicts significantly with my inability to meet so many of their perceived needs. I want to explain but I don’t want to weigh them down with my struggles – they will have enough of their own as they move into adulthood. I want their childhood to be weightless. I want it to be joyful.

Why does so much pain and frustration seem to stem from money? The want of it? The perceived need of it? The lack of it? Feelings of bitterness, jealousy, rage, disappointment, fear, and emasculation all wait at the door, each jostling with the other to be the first through to crowd out every good and bright thing and each a child of mammon. 

At the end of the day I know the darkness is a mist that is blown away by the bright warm breezes of the shining dawn but when you are in their midst it can be difficult to see the promise of the risen sun.

flecks of gold spring
living buried beacons
from the miring mud
that is this lost life

shall we together dredge the muck
for this trapped treasure?
is this wealth worth the wearying work?
till the end it is…till the end
then watch what we forge

I am listening to a young man try to explain the value of the Bible, church and community to an older couple in the booth next to me. He is doing a valiant job despite the fact that the couple is more interested in the newborn baby in the arms of his wife then what he is trying to explain.

There is a great sense of politeness. Culture is exceedingly polite as we church types continue to frantically try to explain the value of Christ and the Bible in and for the world…but they are not really listening. In some way we have become quaint, like some old world custom that somehow managed to cross the ocean and, while intriguing, is only as valuable as the jewelry and art it can inspire.

So it took about 60 to 100 years but the western church has found itself solidly in the midst of existentialism. Questions abound and they all begin with W – What is? Why is? Where is? etc. We have begun to wonder not only if we are but if we ever really were.

Questions are good things there is no doubt about it whether they are ever answered or not. The struggle the church has found itself in though is having to exist in a culture that rightfully asks why it should even bother. There are many approaches to such suspicions – some have fallen into the trap of consumer culture by trying to win the world over with ridiculous promises of healing, health, wealth and well-being. It is the theological equivalent of taking Christ for a makeover –

“Look Jesus (do you mind if I call you Jesus?) the thing is you lack pizzazz. Don’t get me wrong you have a fantastic message for the most part but the kids these days (and the adults before them) just don’t connect with you…we’re thinking new hair, new outfit, maybe a flashier entourage (I mean fishermen and prostitutes? Really?). Just trust us Jesus, by the time we’re done with you the world won’t recognize you.”

So you have health and wealth ministries dressing up Jesus like a cross between Donald Trump and a plastic surgeon while other churches stand up and offer severe critique. The irony of course is that these other churches have fallen into the same trap only they sell Christ as the ultimate program instead – he is robed in classes, seminars, schools, committees, and curricula, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. The only thing he isn’t is personal.

Still others have long ago given up on whether Christ is attractive to the world and have hidden him behind stone bushels – walls of the church and stolid 17th century theology – impregnable to all but the most persistent.

Some have sought to appeal along gender lines, this gives us Jesus the Linebacker; Jesus the Soldier; Jesus the Bear Wrestling, Night Howling, Put-His-Wife-In-Her-Place-If-He-Had-A-Wife-But-Don’t-Ask-Me-Why-He Didn’t-Have-A-Wife-And-Hung-Out-With-12-Other-Guys kind of guy. In short nauseating.

Part of the problem is our unwillingness to present Christ naked to the world. To present him for who he is; who he claimed to be; without the obscuring cloaks we throw over him in an effort to clean him up and/or make him more acceptable to various people and cultures.

We seek to take that which is not of the world and define it according to our own terms – be they gender or cultural or ecological or economic or social or some-such other as it arises.

I can hear you nodding along (some of you) and thinking – “that’s right, what we need is a Jesus of the Bible who spoke the King’s English dammit!” and while I sympathize with the desire this fails to see something of critical importance which is almost always overlooked.

I believe the Bible is a revelation of God’s perfect truth, inerrant in it’s original texts…I really do (stop choking on your coffee, I REALLY believe this and no this does not mean I believe in unicorns and leprachauns etc (although I would like to)).

The problem of course is that many people fail to see that, while God’s truth is inerrant, the medium through which God chose to reveal said truth is deeply flawed.

Get off the floor.

I mean it. There is a serious flaw in the Bible and that flaw is the language.

God is perfect. Christ is the incarnation of God and the only perfect example of humanity. We on the other hand are not. I hope I do not have to spend a lot of time trying to prove to you that humanity is imperfect. I mean – look out the window, turn on a T.V. or simply tune to the most handy news website. We are not perfect. We have never been perfect.

Language is a human construct. Not only are human constructs flawed and imperfect our attempt to understand said constructs are also imperfect. Do you sense the exponential tangent this is heading down? The primary issue of understanding is the nature of communication. Anyone who has been in any sort of relationship knows what I am talking about – we have a hard time understanding each other when we are standing in front of one-another using our indoor voices and simple vocabulary (and still it usually breaks down). How much more challenging do you think it is for us to attempt to understand a series of Godly inspired writings encoded between 2000-6,000 years ago? Written in at least three ancient languages? Following oral tradition? By several different people? Several different filters through which God’s perfect inspiration must pass, guided by God’s Holy Spirit but left ultimately in the hands of people like you…people like me.

Frightening.

Still before we haul God into the dock (to steal a phrase) and put God on trial for being foolish enough to entrust God’s perfect will and Word to people like us we should know that God had good reasons for doing so and they make sense.

Some who have come to understand the flawed nature of language and human interpretation have given up on even bothering with scripture and have moved into a dark and depressing realm that is ultimately alone or selfishly bacchanal in nature but does not have to be – there is another option.

In order to best understand scripture one must first know that God’s choosing to reveal God’s perfect will in such a form is in keeping with God’s nature. That is to say God tends to be contextual, working within the context of creation and culture rather than expecting creation and culture to make the leap to God.

This is a good and praiseworthy thing because by now we should understand that we cannot make such a leap to God and require God to lean in, as it were, and lift us up.

So in keeping with God’s character God extends truth and perfection to us through the Word and through Christ and what is required of us is simple humility. Before the word, expressed to us as it is in a language filled with broken humanity, we must, before all else be humble and seek after God’s spirit for some level of understanding….all the while knowing we will NEVER (all caps bold) fully grasp it.

While I say simple humility it is often the most difficult thing to grasp for us. I can say without a doubt that I am wildly, rabidly prideful and with virtually no humility. Humility is simple only in the sense that it requires letting go, dying…dying to self and to the things of the world.

“When Christ calls a man,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “He bids him come and die.” (See The Cost of Discipleship and don’t be silly – he meant women too).

Humility requires this kind of death. With humility one can take the Word and move into the world in a way that does not beat the living crap out of people in the process.

This is because no matter how you read your Bible humility always requires that you question whether you really understand it. No matter what direction you feel the Bible calls you in humility constantly requires you to check with God and your fellow travelers for course corrections (read community here). Just when you think the Bible calls you to execute someone or judge them humility requires of you the deep and questing prayer that might speak to your heart and say “when in doubt LOVE” and since humility will always keep us in a state of doubt we must therefore always be in a state of LOVE.

Imagine the state of relationships if humility were the bedrock foundation of them. Imagine the state of Biblical understanding if humility were the bedrock foundation of it. Imagine the state of our churches if humility were the bedrock foundation of them.

The Bible is flawed because we are flawed. The Bible is flawed because our nature requires it to be and God knows this.

There is a danger is assuming you understand something PERFECTLY…the danger is that that thing becomes dead and inflexible and remarkably like the letter of the law…petrified and without its spirit. Certainty, however much we crave it, is dangerous. Certainty leads to the illusion of power and power, illusion or not always corrupts.

With humility comes trust. Humility will require us to admit we do not know the answer to some very difficult questions and this will require of us trust that God will guide…that God always guides. Humility and trust always force us to admit that not only will we not perfectly understand God’s perfect Word but that we must surround ourselves with others who are differently gifted so that, together, we can come to better understand it and then – more importantly, act out a humble understanding as a servant to the world around us – this is church, a group of people seeking the elusive quality of humility and trust so that they can better serve and love the world around them.

It is the kind of trust that says “if we can raise $10 million for a new church building than we can give it all away to the poor instead and see what God will do with that” and that is damned compelling to a cynical world tired of its own evil.

Thank God for the Word and the flaws of the languages it is in; the flawed people who interpret and translate for us…for without those flaws we may become certain and in certainty we would most certainly find our own doom.

“Humble yourselves before the Lord and God will lift you up” – James 4:10