Reason Breeds Insanity

I hate to wait. It is not that I am an impatient person. I can sit for hours and look at a painting. I can sit for hours and read a book. I simply hate to wait for the answers to my questions. I hate waiting to hear if I am going to get this job at Hot Topic. I want it. Bad. I want to have fun at work again. I do love the people I work with at Gas City. They are quite pleasant, and generally fun, but I want to be able to be me. I want to wear my nose ring, have a purple mohawk, get a tattooed sleeve, and not have to wear a uniform! Today I am dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a white shirt. It is so me. White is so diminishing, and I love khaki pants! I also love the pain in my ass of removing my nose ring everyday to put in a little clear plastic piece of crap. Does anyone who comes to a coffee house really care if their barista is wearing a nose ring? I wonder if they have to take out their nose rings at the Starbucks in India? What about the Starbucks in the Middle East, do they have to wear black or khaki pants and white or black collared shirts? Leather shoes? Just curious. You would think that because Starbucks was founded by a bunch of pot-smoking hippies, they’d be a bit more liberal! They offer domestic partner insurance (a good thing) for crying out loud, and I can’t wear my nose ring! Okay, I am not sure really where that tirade came from. I must not be very Lent-y today. Either that or I just find it more healthy to rant here than at some random customer.

Yesterday: John 7:1-30

Today: Jeremiah 11: 18-20; John 7:40-53
Jeremiah, more than any other prophet, intimately shows me that trying to live my life the right way is not going to be easy. That I will not always be lauded for doing good. And that I will fuck it up again and again. There is an Indigo Girls song that says: “Me and Jesus, we’re of the same heart, the only difference is that I keep fucking up.” I think Jeremiah might like that song, so might David and Bathsheba, limitless other biblical personalities, and probably a few “good” people in general. I definitely do. However, in this instance, Jeremiah is being persecuted for doing what he was supposed to do. He writes: “for to you I have committed my cause.” He is wholly committed to letting God take care of him. Amazing considering all that he has been through. Will I ever be wholly committed to letting God fight my battles? Probably not, because I still get irritated when people don’t hand me their money and put it on the counter instead. I feel like they think I am not good enough to touch when placing the money in my hand. I need to learn a lot. I realize more painfully everyday that I am filled with pride. I will fall. I know it.

It is interesting to me to think about Jesus’ trial. The trial that he goes through here in John is shady. He isn’t tried before a court of law, and apparently he isn’t really even tried at all. The people who are standing around gossiping about him just assume he is guilty. I love it, they stand around talking about each other just like we do. Solomon was right, there is nothing new under the sun. Nicodemus asks: “Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing what he is doing?” I think perhaps we should ask that question of our own laws. Do we listen to what people are doing before we convict them. I am thinking of the way we jump on political band wagons without even thinking rationally about what they stand for. Did I, on September 11, assume along with the rest of the nation that the Middle East was responsible fo the bombing? Probably, but only for a brief second. For one shining moment I wasn’t sucked into the political abyss. I remember saying in class that day, and receiving some very horrible looks and some nasty emails later, “Remember Oklahoma City. We blamed the middle east, and it ended up being our own citizens.” Now I know also that our own citizens who bombed Oklahoma City, were trained to kill by our own military for the first Gulf Fiasco. So this passage caused me to stop and wonder about myself: “Do I first listen to what people are doing before I condemn them?” In essence do I give people a chance, do I listen to who they are, do I see the value in them that God sees in me, before I dismiss them? Not usually. Do I love my enemies? Do I create enemies? Do I allow enemies to be created for me? It is easy to love people who love me, but do I love the business man who drives a compensation vehicle and orders a compensation latte? Can I honestly find it within myself to first hear what he is doing? Who he really is? Do I look past his seemingly hollow shell to see the man inside? I need to start looking into people instead of through them.

When I was little, we used to go sledding at the back of our woods. My mom and dad used to tell me not to lie down in the snow. They said I might fall asleep and freeze to death. I loved to curl up in the drifts because, like sand, they formed to my body and, like sand, they reminded me of God. How else can we explain the amazing phenomenon of sand particles or snowflakes? Have you ever really looked at sand: millions of little tiny rocks of all different sizes, shapes and colors. Even when the beach seems to be uniformly brown, each particle retains it own unique personality. Like snowflakes: millions of tiny ice crystals of all different sizes, shapes, and colors.

Now, I am not naive enough to believe that every single grain of sand or snowflake is different. There are only so many ways for water molecules to bond, and only so many ways that rocks can be eroded by those same water molecules. Theoretically, I know they aren’t all different, but I have always remained sane by believing that each piece of sand or snow was like no other. While it was dangerous to fall asleep in the snow and it is probably equally dangerous to fall asleep on the beach, there was a certain amount of comfort in lying there on my belly, prostrate before my God, inspecting [Their] creation. I would use the first finger of my right hand to carefully sift through the frozen snow or the wet sand looking for similarities in the vast array of difference. Everything loses its individuality when looked at in mass, but by looking closer, I could glimpse the chaos of what seemed to be order. I was also looking for reassurance. I wanted to know that it was okay to be a little odd, a little different. I needed confirmation from God that [They] did indeed create difference. From a young age, I was painfully aware of my oddity. Looking at the oddities all around me helped me feel at home. I was that one grain of red sand that you’ll find if you look long enough. I was the one pale blue snowflake in a sea of white.

Sometimes, when I have time now, I like to lie in the grass in my front yard, looking for some things I can’t find. I need proof that God exists. I need proof that oddities are the rule. I need proof that I am okay. I need proof from creation that God, while being amazingly creative, doesn’t make mistakes. I need proof of purpose. I need proof of my existence. I need proof that I am necessary. I need faith. I don’t think I am a mistake or anything nearly as self-absorbed as that, but I wonder why I never found two grains of sand that match, and I wonder how there are so many colors of white in the snow, and I wonder how those tiny bugs that crawl around in my lawn ever find their way in this life. I want to know that this all means something.

I never rested in the snow with any intention of falling asleep. I was much too excited to fall asleep. Falling asleep in the snow is like falling asleep in the Louvre. I was drawn to the drifts, to the dunes, to the grass to quench my own selfish desire to find the place where I belonged: face down and vulnerable in front of my creator in the company of the other oddities of creation. Face down, we are all at [Their] mercy.

I do not know what today’s readings are, or yesterdays, but I know how I feel today, so I’ll just meditate about God through that. As good Friday and Easter get closer, I think about what is coming theologically: Jesus dies for us. However you want to think about it, he dies. Why? Why did he go through with it? The question humbles me. It saddens me. But it gives me hope. Ultimately it gives me grace. It feels like when I was in third grade. I got in trouble and wrote “Cory” on the board instead of “Corby.” I will never forget that Cory, a boy in my class, had to serve my recess detention. While I got to go out and play kickball, he stood with his nose in the cold corner of the old brick entryway to our little elementary school. He didn’t even say anything to the teacher about it. He just took my detention. After school he said, “You wrote my name on the board, and I had to miss my recess. Don’t ever do it again.” Even as a child, my guts were wrenched. I felt sick. Someone else paid the price for what I did. I don’t even remember what transgression I committed, but I know I didn’t pay for it. It is kind of like that only on a much grander scale. I never wrote Cory’s name on the board again, but I rely on Jesus to miss recess for me again and again.

Remember Paul Revere? They are finished, like the British were coming, the taxes are finished. Ahhh….that must mean spring is here.

1 Samuel 16:1,6-7,10-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

Isaiah 65:17-21
I have to agree with Rob Bell about the new heaven and new earth. In his book Velvet Elvis he writes about how, as Christians, we place too much emphasis on waiting for the new heaven and the new earth. What we need to do, he postulates is stop waiting and start creating the new heaven and earth right here, right now. Build the new Eden. Because Jesus’ kingdom is already but not yet, we are called to live that Kingdom life here on earth. I think living a lifestyle of kingdom-ness helps usher in this new heaven and new earth. By living it, we bring it into being. At least we live like we believe it already exists but is not yet here. I find myself frequently thinking to myself that if I wait long enough my life will be amazing. I rest on my laurels imagining, fantasizing, about what life will be like in the presence of Jesus in this new heaven and on this new earth. How glorious it will be to look into the eyes of Jesus. I forget that realistically, Jesus is here and now and my life is being lived already in his spiritual presence, but not yet in the physical presence. However, I get a sense of that physical presence when I look into the eyes of a trouble teen, a rushed business person, a homeless person on the street, or even the professors that seem too put together to need or want a savior. I can only imagine what the disciples felt as they lived along side this man, Jesus. I know what I feel like when I get a glimpse of Jesus in my fellow humans, what I feel like when my heart is moved by a poem, a song, or a story, and what I feel like when I see the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ in action on this earth. I think part of what Isaiah is saying is that through our interconnectedness and mutual uplifting we experience this new kingdom: “I will create a new heaven and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.”

John 4:43-54
This passage always tests me to my wits end. How can a father, who desparately wants to have his child healed, simply believe Jesus when he says: “You may go. You son will live.” I cannot imagine myself, though I have no children of my own, just believing or having faith that my son would live. I think I would probably stand there arguing with Jesus about how he really needs to come and save my son. Maybe. Maybe I would look into his eyes and know. Maybe I would see glimpses of the divine, enough of a spark of recognition in his eyes that I would have that faith. John writes: “The man took Jesus at his word and departed.” While he was walking home, obviously a long way from where his conversation with Jesus takes place because it says, “The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour,” his servants meet him to tell him that Junior is okay. Not only does the father walk a ways to get Jesus to heal his son, but he returns with only Jesus’ word that Junior is going to get better. This miracle was enough to make the whole house believe. What faith! Not so much for me.