Off To Honduras

Darlene and I are heading to Tegucigalpa. We will be spending a week with Compassion and a week on the sands of Roatan. Dar's folks are loving our kids for us here in Canmore.

Will get back to writing the book soon. If you're just joining me in this I have been posting potential thoughts towards a book and started out with it here on January 1st. I've been tossing some of these thoughts around for years... trying to say something that reaches hearts before it reaches minds... trying to bypass the usual mechanisms and move things in other places.

We've been looking forward to this trip together for a long time. Actually, we were planning on heading to Kigali, Rwanda. We were going to go from London to Paris to Rome to Athens to Africa... That will have be another time :)

Injured Love

When God created the cosmos he poured himself out and made a temple paradise for himself and humanity.

If humanity had not rejected God in Eden, Jesus may have still come to Earth. It may have always been God’s intention to pour himself into a human face.

Our initial blunder was that we hungered more for our own faces and our own creative versions of "temple paradise". Still pools and sparkling mirrors can be hard to walk away from.

In spite of humanity's desire for created things, God has perpetually stooped down to reveal and commit himself to people like Abel, Noah, Abram, Hagar, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah, Ruth, Esther, Mary, Elizabeth, James, John, Peter, Paul and Mary.

Jesus did not turn one single individual away. He welcomed everybody – even those who hated him. He called Judas, “Friend.” He poured himself out to his own people and they rejected him. Where is the glory in utter rejection? Jesus Christ poured himself into the cosmos that he co-orchestrated in the beginning and didn’t even have a pillow to lay his head on. He came to humanity and gave us all the space in the world to be ourselves – so that we, in our own time, might freely respond, in love, to him. He came with nothing but love and vulnerability and left with nothing less than apprentices and scars.

Judas betrayed Jesus and killed himself. Peter denied Jesus and hated himself. But, no one could distract Jesus from bearing the full weight of humanity on his shoulders and traveling that infinite distance between heaven and hell. There on a cross, God died. He allowed his arms to be stretched out – into the past and the future. He was about to bring all of humanity and their broken history and their anxious future into himself. His agony crushed the heart of his Father in heaven. His loving sacrifice panicked the very depths of hell. In great sorrow, the Father allowed the Son to sacrifice himself through the Spirit. On that cross, the cosmos witnessed: “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” (Eph. 3:18).

Moltmann says that God’s wrath is “injured love....The opposite of love is not wrath, but indifference.” At the cross of Jesus Christ, both the righteousness and wrath of God were openly revealed (Romans 1:17-18). Humans have emotions because God does. Prophets dwell in the emotions of God. This cross crushes and bruises everyone who is willing to come near. There is not one biblical metaphor alone which can accommodate it:

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.
Romans 3:22-25

As friends of Christ Jesus, we are invited to participate in his injured love for the world. When His cross finally punctures the vacuum of our hearts we have access to his throne. We are surrounded by friends. Together, we come before our Father in heaven. He dwells in the midst of his people. He lingers among the glow of faces.

One cries, “Dad, you saved me!” Someone reads a poem about being at home. Another bobbles back and forth on her knees, learning "the unforced rhythms of grace". A young man falls face down weeping and praising his Father for healing a gnarled hand – a wound he’s carried since childhood. And somebody starts singing....

There is always a new song wafting upward and outward amidst the rustling of angel wings. And the dancing, children on their tip toes twirling and spinning, saying, “Daddy, look at me…Daddy. See my dress? I’m dancing for you Daddy. I’m dancing.”

Any spiritual resistance that hinders me from getting to this place is only as strong as my faith is weak.

Wild Good

One cannot begin to face the real difficulties of the life of prayer and meditation unless one is first perfectly content to be a beginner and really experience oneself as one who knows little or nothing, and has a desperate need to learn the bare rudiments.

Those who think they “know” from the beginning will never, in fact, come to know anything.
Thomas Merton

Concerning my own humble person, I frankly confess that as an author I am a king without a country
and also, in fear and much trembling,
an author without any claims.
Søren Kierkegaard

These are the reflections of
simple common sense
by a non-specialist.
Jacques Ellul

Therefore
once more
I will astound
these people
with wonder
upon wonder;
the wisdom
of the wise
will perish,
the intelligence
of the intelligent
will vanish

You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Isaiah 29

I was on a spiritual retreat in the mountains of British Columbia. Out poured this late night journal entry.

When everything feels like the movies;
you bleed just to know you’re alive.
Goo Goo Dolls – Iris

Wild Good
I am seated at a teak desk in a quiet room. On my left, an ocean blue candle deepens behind an iron railway spike from Kitchener, Ontario. On my right, a crimson tea light bleeds before a cross of nails and wood crafted from the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, England. Across the room, incense smolders between two tall flames standing in candlesticks purchased in the market of Calcutta, India.

Above me, on the wall, hangs a simple crucifix.
A six inch figure gazes down in my direction.
Nails in his hands and feet. He looks at me.
Crown of thorns on his head. He looks at me.
Candlelight silhouettes his sore tired frame.

It’s Friday, ten to midnight at Westminster Abbey in Mission, British Columbia – a Benedictine monastery. It’s the first weekend of Lent, a time of personal preparation before Easter. I have just returned to my room from some beautiful worship and prayer with friends. We sang chants, read scripture, and prayed for an hour.

Early in our time together, I flipped over the song sheet to read the benediction and noticed it began with, “Great Spirit, Wild Good of the Almighty…” Wild Good? It was supposed to read, “Wild Goose.” In the Middle Ages, the wild goose was supposedly a symbol for the Holy Spirit. I have never thought of the Holy Spirit as a wild goose. But for the rest of this prayer retreat I will think of Him as my Wild Good.

Wild Good
There is a whole gen- eration in my nation suffocating without you. They are anaemic vampires, drained haemo- philiacs, and exhausted rebels digging their own dusty graves.

Wild Good
Speak softly and tenderly into this still dark night. Thank you for the safe places where we may catch some breath and respond to you. Places to rest and wait – rest and wait. In and out – rest and wait.

In silence we wait;
under your feathers.
They brush our cheeks;
and calm our fears.
Wild Good

Cadavers, Celebrities, or Children of God

The humble person receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun.

The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass.
Thomas Merton

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD : "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you.

The days are coming,' declares the LORD, 'when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess,' says the LORD."

These are the words the LORD spoke concerning Israel and Judah: "This is what the LORD says: Cries of fear are heard—terror, not peace. Ask and see: Can a man bear children? Then why do I see every strong man with his hands on his stomach like a woman in labor, every face turned deathly pale?"
Jeremiah 30:1-4

The time of transition is nearly completed. For those who have willingly hidden and lowered themselves, there is coming a fresh transfusion of strength and clarity. Those who have been hidden are being raised up and redeployed into new territory amidst the flank of giants. The transmission will be fierce. The torque won't submit to the human hands of Absaloms or even Solomons. Huge gears flung into motion. There are great exploits coming for the King at the head of His army. Many wild horses under the reigning words of the King will witness the uprooting and planting of many things. Others will be overrun, bridled, bitted and buried. Great dungeons have been opened - ancient gateways - giants are wandering. And only those who walk in a different Spirit will overcome.

Weaving in and out of the doctrines of Creation and the Trinity, “Cadavers” is about wandering planets slowing down and submitting to the gravitational pull of their Sun. We come to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The One who are three welcome the many who are yet to become the one people of God.

Dwelling on the suffering of God, “Celebrities” is about the penitent ones overcoming the gloss of the show for the sake of gutter to gutter spirituality. The cross forever nailed the sphere of the Trinity to earth and opened a new vortex into the throne room presence of the Almighty.

Adopted into the family of heaven the “Children of God” walk with the humble strength of royalty all over the earth. Breathed to life by the wind, drenched in cleansing waters, and salted with fire – the children of God take back the cosmos with all spiritual wisdom and heavenly authority, occupying 'till He comes.

The stars are not falling; they're not disappearing; they're just taking their place behind the rising Sun.

“Cadavers” is about being centered
in the worship of God at his throne.

“Celebrities” is about being grounded
in the word of Christ at his cross.

“Children of God” is about being launched
into the witness of his Spirit into his world.

As a woman with child and about to give birth writhes and cries out in her pain,
so were we in your presence O LORD.

We were with child,
we writhed in pain,
but we gave birth to wind.
We have not brought salvation to the earth;
we have not given birth to people of the world.

But your dead will live;
their bodies will rise.
You who dwell in the dust,
wake up and shout for joy.
Your dew is like the dew of the morning;
the earth will give birth to her dead.
Isaiah 26:17-19