Let's take a walk

Concerts

My boys are still young. Yeah, I got a very late start on the parenting thing. Thank Goodness. I don't know that I would have appreciated the world if I hadn't had the maturity that years had brought by the time my first was born. Others probably have more capacity for taking in the full impact of a little baby coming into the world, but I am convinced that I didn't until my eldest was born. Bryan.

Bryan constantly shocked us as he grew with the things he did, the things he said, and the things he seemed to know without having ever been instructed. At the time I told myself that I would never forget these things, but I have.

Ben is the same way, constantly exposing the wonder of the world around us with ideas that are so naive that they are deep. I'll tell you a story about him in just a second.

Somebody correct me, but I think it was CS Lewis who wrote about catching a glimpse of heaven at a most unexpected time. If I recall correctly that moment for him was one brightly lit morning when he awoke in his bed to see the sun shining its rays through his window and making the comforter at the foot of his bed brilliant in its radiance. For just a moment he was stunned by the perfection of the scene and was unable to breathe, to move, or to let his mind wander lest the moment be lost. And just as soon as he recognized it, it was gone.
Cool, huh. I don't know that it was a glimps of heaven, but perhaps it was a moment of apprehension when Lewis had full understanding of the intense spirituality of our home right here on earth.

We often think about life as a journey from birth to death. Death is our destination. Some Christians modify the structure of the same old perspective just a little and suggest that a new life will come after death which will bear enough similarities to this one that we may have the same identity but in all other respects this world will be a thing of the ugly past. What a horribly negative way of viewing the world. What a terrible trashing of God's gifts.

Some have suggested to me that they can't wait to get removed from this S-Hole of a world so that they can see God. They are missing the fact that they can see God right now. He is everywhere, with us, in us, and His wonder and beauty is in everything He created. No, the human race has not destroyed God's creation, it remains with us, lifting us to awe of Him whenever we take the time to lose our imagination into the depths of the endless sky above, or the endless universe contained in an atom. And we see something of Him in everyone we meet, as well. In some He's more perfected than others, of course, but He's there.

I was walking home from the weightroom with Benjamin, my youngest. He was about 5 years old, and full of energy (as he is even now). And he was constantly trying to provoke me to something, anything, to interaction with him. So as we walked, Ben and I, Ben would run ahead and call back to his old man, "Hurry Papa, Hurry!" I had just spent a couple hours lifing, and I was exhausted, so the almost imperceptible bounce I added to my step had to suffice as compliance with Ben's urging.

Not enough for the 5 year old. Ben would run back to me, then out ahead again, calling back "Hurry Papa, Hurry." And this went on for about a block before Ben ran far enough ahead that he disappeared over the bank of a small river (more of a creek). And then his head appeared over the bank and shouted, "Hurry Papa, Hurry! You have to see this!"

Concerned that he was about to demonstrate the Swan Dive for me, I decided that I could put a little more energy into my step and actually hurry...just in case. So I got to the river, over the bank, and stood by Ben, who had a grin that transformed not only his face but mine.

"You gotta see this Papa," he said and he picked up a handfull of gravel from the river bank. He looked to be sure that I was watching, threw the rocks into the river, and turned to me.

"Did you hear it, Papa? Did you hear it? They're playing a concert for us!"

I looked away for just long enough to regain my composure.

Here's a thought that bears further consideration. Do you realize that we get offended when we think that people have trespassed into our space in some way, or that they haven't given us enough respect? How about the fact that we feel violated when we conclude that someone has trampled our rights. Suppose we realize that we have no ego to protect and no rights at all to assert? If we can lose our identity entirely in God then those "violations" against us, all those hurtful words and offenses, will have no sting at all. We can simply do the right thing without regard to the responses or reactions we get from other people, and when they disrespect us, we won't be there to be disrespected. In fact, if we take our eyes off of ourselves, we might be able to see more clearly that those who grate against us are children of God in waiting, just waiting for our unconventional response to their attack so that they can see not the strength and awesomeness of our character, but God's grace and forgiveness--kind of like offering the other cheek when we have been slapped on the first. Maybe if we stop looking so much at ourselves we can see the concert in the trickling of a brook, the rustle of leaves, the new growth in spring, and the pure blanket of snow in winter, or the awesome power of a storm and the crashing of the surf.

We don't need to have more of God in us to help us see with spiritual eyes the spiritual world all around us. We need to lose ourselves in Him.

The Big Ideas

I've never really had any big ideas of my own. I was married for 20 years to a woman who felt her life. Everything she did she did on a level of interaction with the world far deeper than I did. You know what I mean? I mean we can do stuff every day virtually unconscious of our part in it and I lived that way much of the time. But she didn't. For her whatever she did was an opportunity to converse with meaning.

So it astonished and confounded me one Christmas Eve service at a small Episcopal parish in Manassas, Virginia, when my ex (not an ex at the time, it took me a few more years to mess that up) read the Old Testament reading for the congregation. I remember it well. All of us there at the time do. She read from Genesis 21 and 22, the birth and sacrifice of Isaac. That's a story we have all heard a zillion times, and it should have been a breeze to hear it again without having a clue what it is all about.

Not for her, though. She sobbed. The memory of it still overwhelms me. A joyful occasion, a familiar reading with an ending that makes us all feel good (Isaac gets to live in the end...fun stuff), friends and family, and the happiest holiday of the year--this was a beautiful service until the tears made us all realize the horror of what we had just listened to.

Here's the story in a rather large nutshell. If you want the condensed version, read the Bible.

Abraham was an old man, and his wife was old, too. He was pushing a century, and she was around 90. Hey, older than me, boys! Abe and Sarah had wanted kids for all their married lives, but it just didn't happen. I could relate to this at the time of the reading because I was around 37, as was my wife, and we had been childless as well, although no for lack of trying, for 14 years of our marriage until our eldest, Bryan, surprised us in our surrendered states. But for Abraham and Sarah it clearly wasn't happening. Even after someone special visited them and said "a kid's coming, just you wait," they were so cynical of ever being parents by that time that they were beyond belief and probably a little jaded about the whole idea.

They even tried to force the issue by having Abraham get it on with the handmaiden (a servant), who actually bore Abraham a son. Pretty good result on many levels (the servant was a smokin' hot babe), Abraham was thinking, but not what God had promised.

Then Isaac came along. Isaac was the promised son, born to Sarah by Abraham, and his arrival surprised the heck out of them even though they had been told he was coming. But you know what? Having been more mature when my boy was born I can relate just a little to what Abraham and Sarah must have thought: their new son brought not another mouth to feed into their existence, but a set of eyes through which to see the world afresh. With the birth of Isaac Abe got to see the world in technocolor (and technocolor wasn't even invented yet), and everything had new and deeper meaning, true purpose, and Love meant something more profound and selfless than ever before.

I can imagine that every day for the next several years Abraham would awaken and run to the baby's room to see first that he was still breathing, every hope and dream wrapped up in the anticipation of the life of his son. He would watch, perhaps even provoke with a gentle nudge, the opening of the kid's eyes so he could begin the day with him. Abe and Isaac would breakfast together, do the morning chores together, and as they walked, Abraham would tell Isaac little tidbits about the world, about plants and animals, ideas, everything he could think of to satisfy the sponge of a mind his son had. And at some point in every day, Abraham and Isaac would wrestle. That's what I like to do with my boys too, duke it out and end the fray with a kiss. Abraham was incredibly proud of Isaac, and was satisfied with life because everything that he had hoped for and wanted to accomplish was wrapped up in the person of his son. Abraham loved Isaac completely.

And then God said, "Kill him."

You must be joking, God, thought Abraham. But God insisted, "kill him."

Abraham went through all the rationalizations for why God must have said something He didn't mean. Perhaps, he thought, God was using the royal "him" when He said that, and didn't intend for him to kill his own son, his dear, dear son. Wasn't Isaac a gift from God? Wasn't he promised to him, Abraham? Wasn't Isaac a reward to him for being such a good (if somewhat weak, at times--read chapter 20 for more about that) man of God? Surely there must be some mistake. And yet the words were clear, "kill him." Truly God was capable of more cruelty than man ever was! He was Horrible, Terrible, Lewd and Disgusting if ever a being was!

And so Abraham took his son, the one he cherished more than he did God Himself, on a walk in the wilderness to a small knoll they called a "mountain" over there, and slowly, resisting every step, ambled up the mountain with his boy in tow. He finished assembling an altar out of rocks, and with tears streaming down his face he turned to his boy and gave him the longest, strongest hug he could muster in his old age. Isaac was frightened by the strength of his father's emotion, and was confused, but in his sweetness he played along and hugged his father back, soothing him with simple words, "it's ok, Papa." "I love you, Papa." And Abraham said to him, "I love you too, my boy...."

Then Abraham lifted his son and placed the confused young man on the altar and restrained him. Abraham drew his knife from the sheath, and held it with two hands high above his head, ready to plunge it into his son's chest. He thought better of it, though, and leaned over to put his forehead on Isaac's, his hair dangling and matted around both of their heads like a veil, and he snuck the knife to Isaacs throat to slit it cleanly--it wouldn't take but a little while for his son to bleed out his life....

Yeah, that's where she lost it in the reading. And so did the rest of us.

Actually, she lost it way back when God first told Abraham to "Kill him." But you get the point. It doesn't matter what happened next. You can read the rest of the story, but please don't until I'm finished with you here. We read on to salve our conscience and to remind ourselves that God doesn't really take our relationship with Him so seriously as it seems. But He certainly does.

See, the point of the story is that God is demanding of us. Not that he wants us to set aside tithes or offerings, or do good deeds, or be nice to people, or live particularly moral lives. He doesn't give a rip about all that (well, maybe a tiny rip). All He wants is all of us.

No, I don't mean that He wants every one of us. He probably does, but what He wants of each of us is every bit of us. He doesn't want us to hold out on Him in any way so that we can enjoy our house, or car, or Harley, or girlfriend, or job, or status, or any other possession, entitlement, or person in our lives that we value more than Him. He is God, for crying out loud. He wants us.

And that's what He wanted of Abraham. Yes, He had blessed Abraham with a son, but that son had crept into the middle of God's relationship with Abraham, and God told Abe to get rid of him. He wanted relationship untarnished by selfishness and things that would interfere in the least.

The story also tells us something about Sacrifice. Sacrifice is not the giving of something from our bounty, but is the giving up of something that is so much a part of us that we cannot bear to part with it...like Abraham parting with Isaac. God wants us to Sacrifice ourselves and our wants to Him in the same way, without reservation (there's that ugly phrase again), and entirely. He wants us to empty ourselves in Him so much that there is nothing of ourselves left to call our identity or ego. He wants to rip us apart until only he can heal us.

Amazing, huh? Amazingly demanding and overreaching, if you ask me, but it makes sense in the end. This is serious stuff.

I've gotta go teach Business Law now, so I can't wrap this up the way I want to, but I'll finish it off in the next post.

Sensuality

I mentioned to my pastor that I think Jesus must have been the sexiest man ever. He responded that yeah surely He was, but the term he might have used is "sensuous." He is right.

Among other things what grips women (and for that matter, what grips all of us) is someone who acts entirely against the grain of society, and who is kind to those the rest of us would rather ignore. When we give to one another, particularly to those we don't even know, without expectation then that giving exposes a capacity for Love that is so amazingly tender and deep that women recognize immediately that there is something other-worldly about the act.

That's partly why, I suspect, Jesus had women who would have died to be a part of Him. Because He died to be a part of them. Sexy doesn't even begin to capture this character in Him.

And physically attractive? Who knows about His appearance but he touched people. Literally. He reached out His hands and touched people for healing, empathy, and who knows what else. We talk about "laying on of hands" these days as if it is a technique we can use to convey God's power to those we are trying to help. For Jesus, though, touching was just a matter of the course of His life. He didn't worry about social more's of being found alone with a woman at a remote location, nor of a woman actually caressing his feet and legs with her hands, her hair. He communicated with His body the intimate nature of our relationship with God. God in flesh. Sensuality.

Connecting with people really isn't all that tough when you think about it. It's all a matter of being there entirely with the person we are near. A hand on a hand, a kind word, an unexpected gift that meets a need. A gift that takes us out of our rational accumulation mindset--a sacrifice of something we hold dear...these are the things that are the substance of true and abiding relationship. Relationship with God, at least, whether we see those people we were a part of again or not.

I wanted to go to a conference when I was in college. But I didn't have the money. Some dude walked up to me one day and handed me $400, the price of my conference and airfare (yeah, back in the old days). I said, "I don't know how to thank you, nor do I understand, but I will pay you back." He said, "it's not a loan: a loan establishes a relationship that can lead to disappointment if either of us fails to live up to expectations. This is a gift. If you give it back, that's ok. But if you never do, that's fine too."

Good stuff. I don't give loans either, now. Giving is just an expression of Love, and strings attached gut the act of meaning. Be gentle, touch, give without reservation.