When Jesus goes by 'Butch'

I can't sleep.

My mind is slipping in and out and then drips right through my tired fingers and I'm not sure I can save it this time.

It's that sort of night, though. The kind where the rain on the window is telling a story you forgot you heard as a child. The kind of night that slows the clock- as real as when you're sitting in the dentist chair and that fifteen minutes may as well have been fifteen dreadful hours. That sort of magic happens on these nights. And it appears so commonplace. You should have noticed it there yesterday like the smudge on the bathroom mirror, right between the eyes.

Drops keep falling. Falling and falling and speaking a language of deeper truths. Truths about how things should be. How they were meant to be.

I saw him last Thursday, down by the lake shore. I was picking up my ruggedly handsome and sunburned husband and middle son and friends from their canoe adventure up the Mississippi River. They were back, survivors of the wild twisting and turning 67 miles by canoe. And it was Matt's birthday. The pies were waiting fresh on my kitchen counter.

He staggered a bit as he walked, head down and eyes quiet. 

All the littles were running around, joy-filled shrieks and windblown hair. There were seven of them altogether. Our two families tend to combine, and we relish those moments.

I saw him. And then I did it.

I whispered to my friend that he was walking toward us and we should really gather the kids. You know, someone was mugged down there just the other day. 

The words slipped out. Slipped just like my mind did tonight. 

I gathered the littles and still looked him in the eye and smiled as he passed. Said 'Hi there' and thought I meant it. 

We scurried along. We sang Happy Birthday. We ate pie. We listened to stories of fishing and storms on the river and campsites and wildlife from excited and tired little boys. 

: : :

The next morning I saw the headlines. A body had been found washed up on that same beach. A homeless man.

My gut knew before I even looked at the man's picture. It was the same eyes, the same long ragged hair. Except he had a name this time. On the streets and with his friends at the church where he often stayed and ate he was known as Butch.

: : :

I've been shouting from the rooftops for awhile now that Jesus is found in the outcast. I've studied this. I've thought and prayed and read and talked a lot about this. I've stepped outside an inner-circle church community to focus on living this. And now here I am, reading the news, seeing his face, learning his name, and all I hear is my judgment. Better safe than sorry, especially with kids. I can easily justify my concerns. And hey, I did smile and say hello. What more could I have done? I mean, really, what could I have done?

I'm naive. Admittedly. But slightly less than I used to be. I know it wasn't a moment where I could have prevented a tragedy. Maybe. Maybe the tragedy wasn't even that I judged someone I knew nothing about out of unfounded fear. Maybe the tragedy wasn't that it happened.

Maybe the real tragedy is that it happens.

We talk a lot about love. Especially loving the unlovely. And in a moment, old habits return and fear rules our hearts once again. We miss the miracle in the common or ugly or unknown. We miss Jesus.

I did. I missed him. And I mean it. I'm grieving a complete stranger, wishing I would have looked a little deeper in those eyes, asked him if he was enjoying the summer sunshine at least, connected. I missed something there and I feel it now, that loss, that groan for a life, for God to come fix all this mess and my fearful heart and turn it into something useable. Something closer to the way things were meant to be.

People are meant for knowing one another and for knowing their Maker. Sometimes you find that you meet Jesus in the grocery store line, on the street corner, or walking down the beach. Often he or she doesn't look a thing like the blond-haired blue-eyed painting we've bought and sold as gospel. We're meant to share life with one another, inter-connected instead of independent. Tearing down walls and labels and stereotypes and injustice and poverty one day at a time by inviting people over or in conversation instead of building fences and installing security systems and keeping our children safe from strangers.

We were meant for so much more than this. And I am sorry.

: : :

The rain is still falling, still saturating the earth, still scattering across the glass like ants whose hill was barbarically stepped on. It is this story of Life and the groaning and suffering and longing for our world to be made whole again, a return to Eden. I am pulled back to my childhood, back when I knew everything was alright in the world. When stories were true.

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.

Whenever you did one of these things to someone 

overlooked or ignored, that was me— you did it to me. - Jesus

: : :

I hear that Butch had many friends, that he was a kind and gentle man, that he had lived here for many years. He is loved and missed.

     ***Due to the response of this post, and after going to  Butch's memorial service, I wrote a follow-up post here:  http://prodigalstories.blogspot.com/2013/07/when-homeless-guy-gave-me-voice.html

"Alright, then, I'll go to hell." - Huck Finn

I ran across a phenomenally written blog post today. I have to share it.

http://brianzahnd.com/2013/06/when-america-went-to-hell/

Provocative title, eh?

Well, it's got me thinking. About slavery then. About injustices now. About re-reading Huck Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin (bumping them up on the must-read-this-summer-list).

In Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck had helped hide a slave, his friend, Jim. Huck knew from Sunday School, however, that hiding slaves is a sin and will send you straight to hell. So Huck writes a letter to Miss Watson telling her where she can find her slave, finally ready to save his soul. Huck doesn't want to go to hell. But he loves his friend even more. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” — and tore it up.

Huckleberry Finn. Giving us a lesson on loving your neighbor. 

"Neighbor" was a messy word back then- certainly it didn't mean slaves! Who are we quick to exclude now? I can think of more than a couple possibilities.

But back to the Civil War.

Zahnd explains the irony of the revivals that swept through churches before the war:

Millions had “accepted Jesus” and shouted hosanna, but they did not know the things that make for peace. They prayed a sinner’s prayer, “got right with God,” and kept their slaves. They had a faith that would justify the sinner while bringing no justice to the slave. They had faith that gave them a ticket to heaven…and a highway to hell.

Probably without even knowing what they were doing these Christians had quite effectively used Jesus and the Bible to validate their racist assumptions and protect their vested interests. They went to church on Sunday. They got saved. They loved Jesus. They waved their palms and shouted hosanna on Palm Sunday. But like the crowd in Jerusalem eighteen centuries earlier they didn’t know the things that make for peace. And Jesus wept over an America headed to hell. The churches were full and slavery continued…until the Civil War. Then 623,000 people died for the sins of America.

This is a heavy bit of history. Have we learned from it? In Luke, Jesus said, “How I wish that you of all people would understand the things that make for peace.”

The things that make for peace. 

Jesus.

How can we better love people? How can we be peacemakers in a war-hungry world?

Zahnd warns:

If we console ourselves with the promise of heaven in the afterlife while creating hell in this present life, we have embraced the tawdry religion of the crusader and forsaken the true faith of our Savior.

Are we more concerned about churches being full, or that 'slavery' has continued?

Dear God, let us learn from our mistakes.

Rock-sitting, veil-tearing, and learning to shut up.

“And then there is time in which to be, simply to be, that time in which God quietly tells us who we are and who he wants us to be.  It is then that God can take our emptiness and fill it up with what he wants, and drains away the business with which we inevitably get involved in the dailiness of human living.”  ~Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

I know we are called to movement. To change. To growth. But sometimes I feel like that's not possible until I sit myself down and get comfortable in an uncomfortable sort of way. Comfortable like sitting on a rock is comfortable.

I mean, this learning to be business is harder than change. It takes patience. Letting go of control (it's an illusion anyway). It takes focus to be still and listen. And I'm not talking about being physically still, because that is way too easy for me these days.

No, I'm talking about stilling my heart.

Mind.

Spirit.

In a culture that idolizes the race toward success, this s-l-o-w-i-n-g  d-o-w-n makes us feel restless, even lazy. But that's hardly the case.

"Be still," God whispers.  "Know that I am God." 

Be still. Not static, but still. Lean in a bit closer. Now listen.

I'm not one to expect God's voice to be audible. I'm sure it happens. Not to me. 

I don't expect writing in the clouds. Not anymore. (yes, there's a story behind that)

I don't need a lightning bolt to tell me where to go next.

I need God.

That is all. It is enough. Just knowing, remembering, that I am God's. I belong. I exist because of Love. That makes me loved unconditionally. And not just this, as if it weren't enough, but I get to be with him! There's that word- with- it keeps popping up everywhere now that I'm looking for it. I get to be with God, in relationship with him, I get to bear the image of my Creator. I have complete access to something divine because 'the veil of the temple was torn in two'. Top to bottom. It was rendered useless, meaningless, nonexistent.

What does that mean for me, sitting on this rock, in this hard place, trying to just be?

I'm not entirely sure yet. I do know that back then there was a boundary, a barrier between the holy and the profane. The sacred and the mundane were separated.

But then something provocative happened. Jesus showed up. As a baby of an underprivileged and unwed (impure) family. His life becomes a story of reconciliation, one where all the rules are turned upside-down. A rescuer, he was, but not in the typical sense. God became flesh and came to dwell with us. With us.

Jesus essentially tore back the curtain that separated us, the creation, from being with our Maker.

So I get to sit here and take it in. I get to stop trying to do good things for God and just be with him instead.

Stunning.

* * * * * * * * * 

Be-ing is an odd thing. But it is what we were created to do. After all, when asked what God wanted to be called, what his name is, God answered "I AM". There it is again. God is. And that isn't just enough, it is everything.

So this place I'm in, this rock that I sit on, uncomfortable and quiet as it may be, is the very best place for me to lean in and hear my Maker whisper these truths back in the wind, in the rustling oak trees, in the bubbling stream...that I am loved just because he loves. Because all is sacred. Because of Jesus.

Because I AM, too.

5-minute Friday :: Prayer

Prayer has always confused me.

When I was younger and passionate about living for God, spending time studying and praying with others, even being part of a very charismatic intercessory prayer group, I always wondered why it felt incomplete.

Since then I've stepped away from most of the circles where prayer is on the program, part of the routine, or a fill-in-the-blank.

Right?!

I can appreciate the well-intentioned and genuine believers who lead these times of prayer, making sure no one's request gets left out. But I have never understood why we feel the need to repeat, almost word-for-word, what was just said out loud, as if God wasn't really there to hear it the first time. Or do we repeat it for our own benefit?

Regardless, I find that prayer for me these days is severely lacking words. When I tell myself I'm going to pray, groans fill my heart and bubble up instead of a poetic masterpiece. I love language. But my language cannot begin to contain my pleas for God to be with me. Isn't it communion we desire instead of merely communication?

With.

I am reading the book 'With' by Skye Jethani with a group of friends. I am only half-way through, but am amazed at the profound but simple truths he draws to the surface. Today I read about how Jesus didn't die merely to inaugurate a mission or to give us a second chance at life. He did not just demonstrate principles of love for others to emulate or to appease divine wrath. "While each of these may be rooted in truth and affirmed by Scripture, it is only when we grasp God's unyielding desire to be with us that we begin to see the ultimate purpose of the cross."

What does prayer look like from the perspective of living with God?

Jethani tells the story of Mother Teresa being interviewed by Dan Rather in the 80s. He asked her, "When you pray, what do you say to God?"

"I don't say anything," she replied. "I listen."

"Okay," Rather said, taking another shot at it. "When God speaks to you, then, what does he say?"

"He doesn't say anything. He listens."

Rather didn't know how to continue. He was baffled.

"And if you don't understand that," Mother Teresa added, "I can't explain it to you."

* * * * * *

On seeking wholeness and puddle-jumping

Just when we can take it no longer, spring shows up. 

I cannot even begin to describe the glory in the warm sun, fading snow drifts, breaking out my new puddle boots and bright yellow spring jacket, not to mention the smiling faces of my kids bounding off the bus in t-shirts, stomping through mud, the shrieks of joy, smiles from strangers while running errands. We are all feeling saved today! This weekend is brimming with hope and joy and we are giddy with anticipation!

Today I genuinely believed that sunshine was the cure for my brokenness.

But it's not.

It is, no doubt, a life-giver, a source of growth and warmth in a cold world. It drags the seasons behind it in compliance, and us as well. Still, not my cure-all, as much as I try to prove otherwise tromping purposefully through the deepest side of a glimmering pool of melted snow.

This afternoon all my inner messes were covered up with the pursuit of just a little more sun, the pursuit of wholeness. But as soothing and healing as it was, it was more like salve on open wounds than miraculous healing.

I've been guilty of reducing God to the one who is making me whole, complete. Is that my greatest desire- to feel whole instead of this nagging brokenness? I do hope for that wholeness and there are moments where I catch a glimpse of it, like today and the wonder at the beauty of the seasons and these life cycles. But I'm talking bigger picture here, and I'm beginning to think God is more than that perfection that we imagine lies at the far-reaches of eternity.

See, I desperately need a God who is with me when the sun doesn't shine.

Maybe wholeness isn't the right goal when it becomes almost a fantasy.

Maybe certainty isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Maybe they've become idols.

Peter Rollins says, 'God is in the midst of life, and where two or three are gathered together, and not out there to be grasped but rather in the depth of life itself.'

Embracing our brokenness, our mess, our failures, without being overwhelmed by them, is where we find wholeness and meaning. Isn't that the scandal of the life of Jesus? That this Good News is for the screw-ups, for the cast-offs, for the ones who deserve it the least?

Read the Psalms and you'll see proof that God is in the full range of human emotions. This life sometimes is not full of hope and joy- sometimes life feels full of crap. God is there.

Sometimes we're stuck in the dead of winter. God is there. 

And when the sun isn't enough and my wounds open again, God is there. In this. Right here with me.

Reduce, Reuse, Repost?

 "Remember–the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker." - Madeleine L'Engle

I find it a little ironic that today is Earth Day, and here I am entering the virtual blogosphere, this crazy world that is the opposite of earthly wild. No smell of moss and pine here. This soapbox creature lets everyone speak their mind, even if they really have nothing valuable to say.  I'm not entirely sure I have a reason, other than that I love to write about things I'm passionate about, like many of you who do the same. I'm not doing it because I have something enlightening to reveal to the world that isn't already being said. I'm doing it because I feel compelled to take the time to articulate my thoughts, particularly about my faith, in a way that is a little less obnoxious than posting on FB where it will surely start a war among the masses in as little as 10 minutes. Yes, I've been known to do this a time or two-hundred.

I am passionate about my faith. I have become a question-asker. This is often not well-received as I grew up in primarily your typical conservative evangelical Christian home, and many of my friends and family maintain those beliefs. While I deeply love and follow the Jesus who walked this earth, I don't always love or recognize the Jesus that Christians display so loudly. Reality is that I don't put my trust in other Christians. I put my trust and hope in Jesus himself, who points straight to our Creator God. I read of Jesus answering questions with parables and following them with deeper questions, and I have come to believe that questions are sacred. It's not God who is afraid of our questions, but it is us who often are afraid of the answers.

I call myself a universe-disturber, a L'Engle term, which is more than a bit presumptuous, but that means a few things to me. First, I believe we are all connected- all people, all of creation, the apple trees and galaxies and sparrows and bumblebees...all dependent on each other, nothing acting just on its own but intertwined and deeply relational. A monarch flaps its wings and affects galaxies a million light years away. Each cell in my body responds and changes to energy and emotion in ways scientists are just beginning to understand. This absolutely astounds me, and while I am no scientist, I have a budding fascination with how this world works. Many of us grow up to face a difficult, yet completely unnecessary choice between our faith and intellectual honesty. People have abandoned their faith over this misconception. I am here to hopefully help make a space for these conversations that I also desperately crave.

My favorite author, Madeleine L'Engle, also says that "universe-disturbers make waves, rock boats, upset establishments. Jesus was a great universe-disturber, so upsetting to the establishment of his day that they put him on a cross, hoping to finish him off. Those of us who try to follow his Way have a choice, either to go with him as universe-disturbers (butterflies), or to play it safe and resist change." Unwavering beliefs may seem like security, but if we cannot move with change, we are closer to death and further from life. And real, meaningful, passionate life is what we are all after! So not only are we all ultimately universe-disturbers in being connected to one another, but I aspire to be a universe-disturber, one who follows in the difficult steps of Jesus of Nazareth.

So here I am. Questions, doubts, weaknesses, all bound up with splashes of hope and peace, and on my best days, a mustard-seed-sized faith and trust in the Maker of this Earth we're celebrating today. There is much in this life that seems meaningless. And then, just when I'm about to give in to this reckless chaos, some glimpse is given which reveals the strange weaving of purposefulness and beauty. Because I know that what God creates, God will not abandon.