Soular Sleeping Bags

Wresting Rest from the Rest of it All

The sun is beginning to set, yet the battle continues to rage on. You see your comrades brandish their bloodied swords, belaying the enemy's advances. It seems to be a stalemate, with both forces suffering the effects of fatigue and diminished visibility as twilight quickly begins to overtake the valley.

You have been warring for what seems like an eternity, even though the battle really only started at dawn. Nonetheless, your whole body aches. Cuts, contusions and blisters pock your body despite the robust body armour weighing you down like a terrestrial anchor. A weary foe advances towards you, hoping that the remnants of his strength will overpower the little energy you have left. You groan on the inside as he approaches, knowing that if you don't push yourself to the very edge, you will die—nonetheless, you make no indication of this on the outside, lest your enemy notices and is encouraged by your weakness. Conserving your strength, you prepare for the assault, and just as soon as the opposing warrior raises his sword over his head, you hear two different horns—one coming from each side of the battlefield. Both are understood as signals for retreat.

Your swords clang upon his impact, and you know by the force of this blow that your enemy really had no intention of fighting further. His weapon being deflected, he takes a step backwards, raising the steel blade to a defensive position as slowly, he takes a few steps backward. Relieved by this change in events, you yourself begin to take a couple of backward steps before turning around to begin the arduous trudge to the where the army is camped, just over those hills to the east.

It's been a long day. You're exhausted and the only thing that you want to do when you get to the camp is take off this heavy plate armour and collapse onto your bed. The washbasin can wait til the morning. Having arrived, you disrobe and crumple into your bed, falling asleep even before your head comes to rest on the matress.

But what if? What if there were no guards, no sentries, no watch towers to keep a look out for approaching enemies? What if all of your comrades were mercenaries, willing to turn the instant that the opposite side made an offer that outbid your side's agreement? What if there was no one around you that you oculd trust to keep you safe as you recouperated from the day's long battle?

You probably wouldn't sleep very well. You probably wouldn't get much rest. You probably would spent the night in a state of half-sleep,as you kept your guard up & kept your senses alert to the slightest hint of anything approaching your "resting" self.

Of course, you probably would die in the next day's onslaught due to fatigue & demoralisation, so why bother trying to keep yourself safe during the night when you're pretty sure that you're gong to die the next day because of it? Vigilence, perhaps. A sense of self-preservation that hopes to defy the inevitable because maybe, just maybe you can beat those insurmountable odds and live an extra day.

Every living thing needs rest, even if we try to overlook this necessity in life. Plants average 12 hours of rest from their labours each day. Humans require an average of eight hours of sleep every night to "recharge" sufficiently for the next day's challenges. Bears, frogs, insects, reptiles and other select members of Animalia all go into hibernation for about a third of the year (bears technically engage in torpour, but that's not really the important part, now is it?). The human heart is at rest more often than it is beating. Even God Himself rested on day number seven.

But what happens when we cannot find rest? Each of us, for certain, can accommodate to certain stressors and demands upon the physical body, but ultimately, we fall asleep whether we want to or not. This takes care of the physical requirements of rest; but what about all t hose other facets of human existence? What about social rest? Emotional rest? Mental rest? Spiritual rest? These things (unfortunately) do not resolve themselves through sleep or another unescapable physiological process: we can push these things aside for pretty much as long as we want to. However, ignoring these fatigues does not resolve the defecits.


What's in a Sleeping Bag?

I'd like to assume that every animal that is capable has some form of refuge, some form of hiding place yto which it can let its guard down and rest. Humans, I think, are a bit more complex, though. It isn't really a place that humans need to get to; it's a state of mind. We need to feel safe despite the surroundings. We need to feel protected regardless of what goes on around us. I could be six inches away from a furioius grizzly bear and feel perfectly safe—provided that there was a steel cage between us. I could be sitting right next to a venting tank filled with 60 pounds of liquified petroleum gas while playing with a lighter, provided that that venting propane is being shunted through a regulated control valve and directed towards a burner in my barbecue. I could feel delightfully at ease while scaling an 80 foot cliff with jagged rocks baring their sharp edges at the base taunting me, were I to fall, as long as I had tethered myself to a safety rope as part of my ascent procedures. Mind you, I could be sitting at home, buried in my sleeping bag nice and cozy warm, all the while being scared crapless because I was certain that the boogieman was going to eat me.

We all have "places" that we find rest. For some of us, we find rest in large groups of people who all know our names & welcome us by name. For others, rest is found by a campfire in the middle of the woods. It could be found on the highways as you weave in and out of the speeding vehicles. One could even find rest at a casino, at a bar, at church, in a café, with family, with friends, with strangers, with a book. Perhaps you're one of those people who finds rest in doing stuff—hobbies, sports, activities, etc. Each of us has an escape. Each of us also probably has more than one.


Building Forts

It would be sweet if we, as Christians, could always model ourselves after Biblical precepts, wouldn't it? I mean, David says that he finds his refuge in the Lord. Jesus admonishes us to come to Him to get rest, all the while imploring us to abide in Him so that we may be one with eachother in Him as He is one with the Father. Oh, to be perfect... It would be nice.

I seem to find myself usually getting into the situation where life gets in the way of this "taking refuge" in God. Busyness and obligation often eat up my daily time until I have nothing left—not even enough time to devote to more than 6 hours of sleep per night. Teaching in Thailand is very much this way, and to be honest, I hate it. I work too much. I have so much work to get accomplished on a daily basis that my ability to commune with God—much less anyone else—is essentially a pipe-dream. Not really a good place to be in especially when you're supposed to be doing ministry work, eh? So, I do what I can—I replace my ideal place of refuge with a crappy substitute. Since I know that I don't have the time to spend with God, I default to me carnal desires—finding rest in accomplishment & excellence (believe you me, this is a bad combination to have: too much work + finding "rest" in doing a good job only ends up with you doing more than too much work, if that were even possible. Unfortunately, I am myself and I can't see beyond my own perspective as to what is required and as to what is mere "excellence" striving). Believe you me, this substitute works about as well as replacing the cream cheese in cheesecake with axel grease. However, it's only after you've gone through the fire that you realise how much the substitute sucks in comparison—while you're in the midst, you cannot even begin to appreciate how feeble your scarecrow guard is against any lurking enemies while you sleep.

So what about guards? What about community? What about being one with others, striving towards the goal of community with Him? It takes work. It takes trust; it takes faith in the others. Community is essential in labour-intensive ministry, I am finding.

But what happens when you do not see your fellow soldiers? What happens when you feel alone & deserted precisely because you're so heavily engaged in the battle? I don't know. Maybe it's a lie. Maybe it's misinformation fed by agents of the enemy precisely formulated to keep community from congealing.

The more & more that I think about it, the more & more I begin to realise that community doesn't happen by accident. Forts & garrisons don't self-assemble; they do not spring up out of the ground ready to go. No, they require foresight, planning and purposive striving—sapping what little strength each individual has left in the hope that the meagre investment will produce bountious returns.

But how does it start? Well, you gotta let your guard down. You've got to let others be the sentries, be the watchmen, be the ones armour-clad. You need to let go of your perosnal safety, to trust in the ability of others to do this for you, to lie there, vulnerable and naked. If you don't, you're going to die in the battle tomorrow; no one can keep the vigil and find rest at the same time.

And what about finding rest in God? Same deal. Are you willing to let go of what you think is important and necessary just so that you can spend enough time to be with Him to find the rest that He's wanting to give? Do you trust Him enough to act as a sufficient guard, allowing you to complete the tasks that He has assigned for you...

Or would you rather lie on the ground in a state of fitful half-sleep, jumping to the "ready" as soon as you perceived anything that closely resembled an offensive advance, essentially guaranteeing your slaughter in the next day's tour de force?


It's up to you: sleep, or die trying.

“Your God. I Believe Your God Heal Me.”

I’m literally flooded with emotions right now. I don’t know what to think—it is like my head is not on straight &/or I’ve been smacked across the back of my skull with a heavy, blunt object.

There is an old gentleman who runs a food shop / sidewalk eatery out of his house that pretty much every farang staff member at GES has gone to for who knows how long. His name is Sombat, and apparently he has been dealing with a rather serious gastrointestinal problem for many years. It had become so bad in the recent months that the doctors were telling him that they would have to perform surgery in order to fix whatever was wrong. The downside is that Sombat is well advanced in years—probably about 70 years old—and as far as surgery goes, the older you get, the less advantageous the risk of an operation becomes.

His pre-op screening was scheduled for Wednesday—yesterday. On Tuesday this past week, one of my fellow teachers, Matt, & I stopped and talked for a bit with Sombat after we had finished our meal. Matt asked if we could pray for him before he went to see the doctors the next day. Sombat, like the majority of Thailand, is a Buddhist, and because of this, he graciously accepted the prayers offered up for him to a foreign God, since any good thing has got to help (right?). We quickly prayed for the man as we were standing in the shop, asking God to heal him & that Sombat would know—if he did get healed—it was because of God that he was healed.

Wednesday came & went. Today, I just finished my meal at Sombat’s place, and after paying, I asked the man how his doctor’s appointment went. He told me, as best as he could with his limited English, that the doctors took a scope and looked up inside him from underneath & down from the top side for the problem. He told me that the doctors said the lesion in his “stomach” had sealed up, motioning with his hands by taking his pinkie finger and wrapping around it with his other hand, as if to seal off the tip from the rest of the finger. Instead of the surgery that the doctors had told him was going to be mandatory, they gave him some medicine to take & he was told to sleep a lot for the next month, until he went back for a final check-up.

He stopped, looked at me and said, “Your God. I believe it was your God that heal me.” There was a look on his face of unmistakeable joy and honesty that it would have been impossible for me to in any way think he had just been polite, trying to make the farang who prayed to his foreign God feel good for offering up “good hopes.”

I walked away surprised, overjoyed and completely taken away. I’ve pretty much been a basket case ever since. Here I am in Thailand, feeling useless & drained; on the verge of giving up on my God because he supposedly threw me here in Thailand to do stuff for Him, but all I’ve been doing has been schoolwork. The first—and most recent—time that I ever prayed for God to do something big was to heal my best friend’s father from his cancer. I had firmly believed that God would; then 3 weeks after rigorous prayer, my friend’s dad died. I was sent in a tailspin, having to reassess everything that I had ever believed: This God who I was serving—was He even real? He told us to ask Him to do stuff & to “believe and not doubt” that it would happen, and that it would, but here I was, totally devastated by the fact that God didn’t come through in the way that I had expected when my friend’s dad passed away.

I find myself reaffirmed that God does listen; that prayer does work; that God does love; that God exists. Furthermore, I find myself horrified at how I’ve let my walk with God very much slip away, recounting the many adventures that we have had together in my life.

Then there was this man, a Buddhist, who had more faith in my God than me. A man who believes that a God who was not his own reached out and healed him. That takes faith; more faith than I can confess to ever having. God has always been mine—He’s always been “there”; a part of my existence. There hasn’t really ever been a leap to grasp Him for me, as fundamentally, my very life has been founded on Him from day one of my life. I grew up in a Christian home & decided to follow Jesus at a very young age, so in that respect, I’ve had it easy. On the other side, though, I’ve never been subjected to the “otherness” of God—having to reach out and take hold of a supernatural being & relate with him without really having a background to set that relationship. I haven’t had to decide to switch allegiances from one god to another or from one set of religions / spiritual beliefs to another. Yet, here is this man who credits this God, which wasn’t his own, for restoring his health.

Increase my faith, God. Increase my faith.

Ode to Eve

You laugh at the oddest things;
Sometimes I wonder if God cross-wired something in your head
Yet day by day, hour by hour, you continue onward, unimpeded

You have two feet, two arms, two legs.
Because of that, I am certain that you’re human
Yet I get confused why you focus upon things that always seem un-needed

Why is it that when I say one thing,
You think I say another?
Why is it that when you say nothing at all,
I am supposed to understand what goes on in your head?

I really wonder if God messed up this replication;
But He says He’s perfect

I really wonder, then, why He made you the way you are;
I’m told it’s complimentary.

Do you have a manual, or a guidebook anywhere?
Is it coming in the mail?
Back-ordered? Post-dated?

Throw me a bone here, Eve.
I haven’t et the apple yet
So, of knowledge, I haven’t a shred.

—Adam

Phonemic Ambiguity

A dark void is not an abyss;
At least there is darkness inside.

Termite-ridden tree-trunks are not destroyed;
Merely transformed into an amorphous, edible abode.

Hope sinks as it sighs;
Eyelids drip with much-belaboured heart sweat.

Where is peace? All there is is piece.
Where is rest? All that remains is the rest.
Is there anything to make one glad,
Without turning into a garbage bag?

Hope frozen over; the chills of intergalactic vacuum
pressing in, squeezing against
bunny rabbits, rainbows and bright, sunny
spring days.

Hope springs eternal
unless it’s clogged with ice.

Gossamer Junctures

I am sitting here in my classroom on the last day of a long weekend, indulging in an iced mocha from 7-11 while munching on a brand new favourite: garlic toast crackers. Usually, I would be working on my schoolwork, but my iced mocha isn’t finished and I would consider it a capital offence to squander the liquid rejuvenation on something so vulgar as humdrum work. As a result, I sit here, writing my contemplations on this past weekend.

Community is such an odd beast. It is so fragile that the gust of wind from a single whisper can topple years and years’ worth of mutual construction; yet it is so resilient that no force in the universe can sever the bonds created through such interaction. It is an oxymoron: to build it requires reckless abandon & infinite trust as we reveal our deepest weaknesses before the other; yet it is through the stalwart resilience of its members that we are made to feel safe to do so.

Community is spider’s silk.

I was reminded at how perplexing and (at times) absurdly irrational community was this weekend, when I was abandoned in the middle of a mall that I had never been to before in the middle of a part of Bangkok that I had never set foot in before. At the best of times, I find it difficult to assume the role of passive dependent, and being in Bangkok—not able to communicate basically at all with anyone around me—accentuates the stress that such a position puts upon me. I am a rather independent individual, seeking foremost to lead others, then either to follow proactively / cooperatively or to blaze my own trail solitarily. Having to rely on others and wholly to abdicate personal efficacy is difficult, but when this is compounded by being / feeling abandoned by those upon whom you are trusting, my stress really rises.

Often at home in Canada, I felt overlooked, ignored or (perhaps “at best”) obligatorily included in much of my “community’s” activities. I felt that association with me—for the most part—was done strictly out of courtesy and manners than out of genuine interest. Needless to say, such a social position does wonders for one’s self-esteem, and since you’re often forgotten about, you end up having weeks to sit in your house thinking about it as you hear that your “friends” are either out doing something, gone on a road trip or something to that effect whenever you try to contact them. After spending a couple of summers working at a Bible camp in the Rocky Mountains and being exposed to a different sphere of people, I discovered that my social predicament was not all that was available: there could be more; there could be real interaction and real community.

I resolved never to acquiesce to any trend of substandard social treatment again, concluding that a life with little-to-nonexistent but real community was more fulfilling than a life filled with scores of casual acquaintances who made you feel about as welcome and accepted as the mat on the floor which kept the mud from shoes and boots off of the tiles. Since I’ve been well-versed with “mat treatment,” I tend to be rather sensitised to any instance of being treated that way, and since my resolve for anything is about as weak as my drive for oxygen, I have pretty much zero tolerance for such treatment, seeking to remove myself from the situation as effectively as possible. I don’t take well to feeling as though I am an accessory or a tag-along to a group, and when I feel abandoned—as I did this past weekend—my mind is flooded with negative memories and negative emotionality.


Flip the Switch

On the other hand, this morning, I was delightfully surprised to have my roommate run up the stairs, looking for me. He told me that a bunch of people were getting together for morning brunch and that I should come. I’m not sure if he realised how much such an invitation meant to me—having lived the majority of my adult life being (or at least feeling) overlooked whenever those around me were doing anything. Furthermore, having just—not more than 20 hours previous—been assaulted with a strong reminder of how miscommunication and oversight is so caustic to (at least my apprehension of) community, this completely opposite gesture made my heart leap with joy and invigorated my soul. The smiles of welcome and the genuine interest of those that I ate with today were as refreshing as a cool salve on blistering sunburns.

“

20“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.

—John 17:20-22

“

3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write this to make your joy complete.

—1 John 1:3-4

Exuent All

The weeds are heavy and barbed as they wrap around the swimmer’s legs. Tugging, taunting, tearing into feeble flesh. There is no respite: ocean waves prophesy a coming storm as their whitecaps swell and crash o’er the swimmer’s bobbing noggin’.

“Fish food,” he thought. Shark bait; snail fodder. A murky red cloud seeps up, confirming the pain from his weedy lacerations. The moon is high; the tide comes in: these anchoring plants do not float.

A blazing brilliant snap of electric fire illumines the pitchy sky and inky sea, though it is no help. The fishing boat’s no less than kilometres away, barrelling towards the harbour, bent upon preservation.

Breathing liquid salt, the tired swimmer yearns to rest. Without this fight for air, perhaps the kelp snare could be vanquished. Driftwood, volleyball, life vest, styrofoam—anything to keep air in and salt out. Anything


Pass the popcorn, I’m hungry.
What? No butter?!
Nevermind.

Potassium Fog

Tin wooden motor shack, burning down the street
Fuming billows of soot and spewing seed for rain

Passengers zoom by: some in some out
Some under tires, being chewed to rubbery mulch

Rain soot. Rubber blood. Fields of fallow sorrow.
Cloud seed. diesel blood. Broken pumps for pain.

Rack
Clack
Shack
Smack
Lack lack lack

Back pack
Cougher’s hack
Sound of taxi horns attack

Where is rest: In the wheel well?
Where is consolation, the stays of stilted houses?
Along the soi; dredged in the klong; scurrying away in the gut of a five-inch cockroach?

Though their leaves serve as umbrellas
I am still looking
Searching
Searching for the banana seeds.

Shadows of Hope

It started off as a very pleasant evening. I was sitting, waiting for a handful of friends who were going to meet me for dinner at a nice Indian restaurant on this tropical island that we were visiting for the long weekend. The food was great, the conversation was decent and the people were all excellent company (it isn’t every day that a lone guy can hang out with five girls for three days straight and not be driven completely mad). We were just finishing up the main course and discussion was rumbling about finding a nice little corner somewhere to grab a bit of something sweet for dessert. Then something that I could never have expected happened. One of the girls piped up—completely out of the blue, and not fitting with the present conversation topic at all—and said, “Just to make the record clear, Bill’s father has died. He’s planning on staying for the funeral and hanging out with his mom for a bit, but his e-mail said that he’ll probably be back in a few weeks.”

I felt as if I had been just sideswiped by a tractor-trailer. I know that not many of you probably have fallen 3.5 storeys, like I have, but the feeling of the absurdity of what had just happened was very much the same. When I fell in 2002, the thing that struck me the most (aside from the 8” steel pipe that I landed on) wasn’t the shooting pain on my left side which left me sitting up, gasping in agony. It was the incredulity that I had actually just fallen about 30 feet. The crazy thing about that, though, was that this disbelief of falling set in the moment after my hands lost their grip; it did not really pass until we started to drive off to the hospital.

The announcement made that very night—this past Monday—felt very much the same. Now, although I wasn’t tumbling in a free-fall towards a large metallic tube this time, I just as much felt the dread of being out of control as I headed towards a destination that I did not want to meet.

Bill isn’t his real name, and the reason that this news struck me so much, perhaps, is that Bill’s brother is my best friend. Bill’s family is as dear to me as my own.

* * * * *

It was torture waiting for the cheque to arrive. Our server was being as charming a chap as anyone could ever be, showing all of us several card tricks. I know that if it had been any other night, with any other bit of news, I probably would have eaten up his sleight of hand, but at that moment, I was so removed from what was happening: I just wanted to escape. The cheque came; I paid my fare and quickly excused myself from the company of my counterparts. I didn’t make it back to my hotel hut before the tears overcame my willpower to contain them. Through the liquid blur, I did finally manage to make it to my room, where I crumpled beside my bed and wept. I did not want consolation; I did not want company; I did not want anything, so I sat there—a big mess—surprising even myself at the strength of my grief. My shirt quickly became drenched with tears and sweat (I never knew until then that grief could require such exertion); my throat was worn raw and my body exhausted after 90 minutes of heaviness. Then a peace welled up within me.


Bill’s father had cancer. He was diagnosed a week before I flew halfway around the world to teach & do missionary work. It had been something like 11 weeks since his initial diagnosis, where the medical team thought that he had a high chance for successful treatment. Not a day had gone by—not even 6 hours typically passed—that I did not beseech the Lord to move in such a way as to make His glory known through this difficulty. I prayed and prayed and prayed, and I actually came to the point that I really, really believed (without even the slightest doubt) that God would heal Bill’s father and restore his health. My grief wasn’t directed so much at the death of Bill’s dad: we would all see him again—especially since Bill’s father decided to draw himself back towards the Lord during these final weeks. My grief was mainly focussed upon the huge loss that my friends were dealing with, those that Bill’s dad left behind. It was huge; it was gross; it was sudden. Not only this, but I felt even a bit betrayed by God. I felt lied to. The Bible tells us that if we ask for anything in the name of Jesus—and that if we pray and do not give up—then whatever we ask for in His name, the Father will give us, because He likes to give good gifts to His children. All of my prayers, all of my intercession added up to a big pile of horse poop, because it seemed as though God didn’t care about what I asked for. Then I remembered. I remembered that although I asked for Him to heal Bill’s father, I had this one string attached. I prayed that God would heal Bill’s dad, but only in a way that His glory would be made fully known.

Now, I think about the story of Jesus & Lazarus in John 11. I have a new, fresh perspective of how Mary & Martha were feeling. They knew that Jesus had the power to heal their brother, but Jesus purposefully did nothing. He let Lazarus die, and when Jesus came to the funeral, Mary & Martha were grieved, confused and broken-hearted. Part of me thinks that they thought Jesus let them down. I know that the power of God can raise people from the dead, and so did Mary & Martha, yet they considered only that the glory of God would be made known “in the resurrection at the last day.” I see myself considering the same. I find myself asking the same question that the bystanders were asking in John 11:37, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Doesn’t Jesus have the power to stop this sickness and death? Why didn’t He?

Perhaps, it is because God has a bigger plan in the works than we could ever understand. Even now, I still pray that God would let His glory be known through this sickness and death—who knows? God rose Lazarus; perhaps He will do the same for Bill’s dad. That would be amazing. I know that He has the power to do so; I just no longer have the confidence to say that he will do so. I would love to see it. I really would. Yet even if He doesn’t, I can hold on to the truth knowing that God works all things for the good of those who love Him.

A Prayer of Perspective…

God, you are worthy. I miss talking to You. You are the only one that I can fully, fully divulge myself to which is great, but sometimes also makes me feel a bit lonely. You have created me to be a very unique person, and for that I am thankful. However, sometimes, it's a bit difficult to live and interact with people who come from such different perspectives or such different active approaches to the applicability of living. God, right now, I do feel that way—I feel kind of lonely; kind of separate; distinct; isolated. I thank you for this community of great people, but it just seems that my interplay with reality is just so markedly alien that the world in which I find myself to be seems literally distinct from the perspective of reality that others find their interactive engagements undertaken. To be honest, thinking about this even a little bit feels kind of creepy. This engagement of life is definitely not a mutually identical experience, and I feel as though if "experienced reality" were plotted upon a standard normal curve, I'd probably find my data point way out in domain of one of the 5th standard deviations. Very alone and very unique. Very otherish and rather polar to someone else's equally (but markedly opposite) unique apprehension of reality. Oh what bliss there can be found in normality; what community and what comfort.

God, I don't know why you've put me way out here, and I'm not even certain that you'll ever tell me the answer to that question, but I know and am confident that you've positioned my perspective precisely where it's needed to be. How you'll use it remains a mystery, yet I wholly trust that there is a purpose and there is a meaningful calling for my being out here in the far, remote reaches of understanding that which can be known.

Oh Father I yearn to be known. I yearn to have caught the intrigue of someone so much that they would like to suck the marrow out of my perspective, and to taste that my mental processes are so drastically different that the bulk of humanity's. I would love to be a resource; I would love to be known.

But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, and He who formed you, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are Mine!
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,
Nor will the flame burn you.
For I am the LORD your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

[Isa 43:1-3 NASB]

Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your
ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight.

[Ex 33:13 NASB]

May I rest in You, Elohim.

Much love,

The Lucid Elusion.

Schizobloggia

Hello faithful (and casual) blog readers! If you're looking for / wondering about my Thailand adventures, I've decided to organise those posts in a new blog: http://thailusions.blogspot.com. Catch all the updates over there, while still checking here for more general blog posts!

—The Lucid Elusion

Get a Grip

Get a Grip

It was late December one year, when the handful of us decided to go on a hike up to the waterfall in the Coulthard Basin. We had to leave early, for the snow was deep and we wanted to get back to our pickup location before nightfall. All of us brought sufficient gear and clothing for the weather, and at the steady rate we were hiking, the many layers slowly began to peel off one by one. Our pace was paying off: we stopped for lunch 3/4 of the way to our destination, giving us ample free time to do whatever we'd like when we reached the waterfall. In fact, we again underestimated our pace and reached the then buried waterfall less than half an hour later. With the sun still high overhead and the weather perfectly clear, we looked before us and considered our options. Do we make a run for the Coulthard peak today, or do we just bum around here at the last base campsite? All of us being pretty vigorous, as far as hiking goes, decided that it would be a shame to pass on an opportunity to peak a mountain in the dead of winter—I mean, just think of the toboggan ride coming down! The snow was deep and soft, untouched by any living creature so far that year & avalanche season was still another couple months away, so what the heck: why not?

Our ascent began that winter's morning, and we were making exceptional time. The fresh snow packed well into a boot-made staircase, providing a very convenient path up the mountain's slope. One by one, we tromped up past the top of the outcropping cliff, where the waterfall usually would begin its cascade in the summer months. Now, the only clue that a waterfall even existed underneath the soft, fluffy powder was the shape of the mountainside characterised by the sharp, winding ravine punctuated at this jutting lip, making a steep drop-off at least 30 feet before resuming a more gentle descent towards the Star Creek valley below. Then it began.

As our ascent continued up Coulthard's shoulder, the beautiful powder that we had previously enjoyed as a firm foothold suddenly became much shallower. To add insult to injury—almost as if the mountain didn't want climbers on it—the slight skiff of powder rested very tentatively atop a hard, slick layer of ice. The only person who was making any headway up the slope anymore was the one guy who happened to have hard-shell mountaineering boots on: his boots at least could muster up enough traction to hold onto the not-so-friendly slope. Because of his superior traction, we elected this guy to be the group's leader, cutting grooves into the slick terrain with the hope that his efforts would improve our chances of ascent as we followed in line behind him. Yeah, it didn't work so well. Our fast pace slowed to a crawl, and although we still were making some headway, the danger was increasing. Every ten or so steps that we went forward, one member of our group would experience the chilling joy of having their foothold fail, issuing a short slide down the slope, on average of ten feet. What made things worse was if the first "slider" happened to be relatively close to the front of our line—which was more often the case than not—and by the time our last group member reached the slide-point, all of the supporting snow had sluffed away, leaving nothing but a clean, glistening patch of ice which had to be climber up & over.

Conditions increasingly worsened, and now everybody but the hard-shelled boot boy was experiencing the slide. Since the slope was becoming steeper, the slide lengths were growing as well, and, to be fitting, the direction of each slide always had the sorry hiker careen towards that thirty-foot drop off, now some twenty feet below us. Not good. Our boots' traction couldn't keep us from sliding treacherously towards injury; we had no other choice but to abandon our ascent. Instead, we traversed to the south a little ways and butt-slid down the slope in a pile of powdery bliss.

A year or so later, during one of our field sessions for my outdoor leadership training, we were taught a life-saving manoeuvre to guard against out-of-control slides down snowy slopes: the self-arrest. If you find yourself careening out of control down a snowy mountainside, you had better still have your hiking stick with you. The technique involves righting yourself to face feet-first downhill, with a hiking stick strong enough to support your full weight held tightly in both hands. What must then be done quickly & properly is to toss yourself into the air and flip yourself over—feet first & gut down—while positioning your body & stick in such a way as to drive the hiking stick firmly into the mountainside at about chest-level, while ensuring that only your toes and the stick are in contact with the slope. If done correctly (assuming that there is more than 1 cm of light powder over a sheer rock-face), the resultant impaling of the stick into the mountain and dug-in toes should halt your descent, providing you with a relatively firm anchor.



Sliding down mountains—at least the dangerous type—tends to happen without warning, catching the hiker off guard. Panic and fear typically ensue accompanied thereafter with a few strings of expletives, either spoken or thought. There usually isn't a way to tell when, where or how often a slide will occur, nor is there a gauge of how much time you'll have to try to stop the descent before hitting trees, boulders or the edge of a cliff. The only thing that matters is your ability to get a grip on something to avoid the impending doom.

So, I ask the question: what do you hold on to? Life's full of surprises that will inevitably send us all careening out of control at one time or another, and it is imperative to have a firm grip on something that won't let you down. Are you walking along in other people's footprints, hoping that those footholds don't give way, sending you towards a cliff? Have you picked up some random branch along the way, hoping that it'll have enough fortitude to stop your descent without breaking under the stress? Are you hoping that the person in front of you or behind you is fast enough to grab you and equipped enough to stop you from sliding downhill without being pulled down with you? As for me, I hold onto Christ. His grip’s been proven strong for over 2,000 years and He promises not to lose even one who grabs a hold of Him. Can your grip match that? Think about it...

All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.

-Jn 6:37-40

The Solution to Pollution is Dilution

Watered down. The key to removing potency from many things in this world is to decrease its concentration. It works for acids—to shift a pH closer to neutral, you "do as you aughtta; add acid to wattah." It works in cooking: to make hot sauce for wings into mild sauce, you add a splash of the sauce to some water & mix. Heck, anyone who's ever gone to a church's social function knows all too well about dilution from one phrase: church juice. It's essentially coloured water, regardless of whatever the juice's packaging might originally have said. Dilution.

Why is concentration so important? How come a thick pile is more potent than the same amount of stuff spread thinly over a larger region? Perhaps the ratio of effecting agent to effected target has something to do with it. Perhaps may also perhaps be an understatement here.

It seems to be that the concept of concentration can be viewed much like a military battle. Which do you think has a better chance of success: 10,000 soldiers fighting 500 fronts at once, or 10,000 soldiers fighting five fronts at once? A stronger, united force seems to have greater impact on a localised region than a dispersed "unified" force.

So what the heck am I getting at, with all this rambling? Well, a couple things; yet these couple things are really one.

First part: I feel diluted these days. I feel largely useless in life, missing out on many endeavours, falling short of success in many potential areas al because of a lack of sufficient force. I think about it, and I see that my dreams are evaporating. They evaporate because my dreams require more energy, effort and resources than what I alone can muster. Many of my writing projects are put on hold. Scripts lie half-finished—or less; books barely get written. Photography and filmography gather dust in my retinue of things to do. No productions are in line for my future, alas. Spiritual similarities also abound: I feel strongly that my Christianity has become rather ineffective, due largely to a lack of sufficient access to a like-minded community. I feel choked by weeds.

How come? Why? What the heck is going on? Life, perhaps? Things often tend to get in the way, yet my priorities are my own & ultimately, the choices I make in my daily life are essentially made by me alone (albeit, God should also have a hand in that too).

I think that Satan is an environmentalist. He's been using the solution to pollution within the church for years now. Back in the day, the primary method of marginalising Christianity's impact on the world was through brute force and suppression. Cut some heads off, feed some Christians to starving lions, dip others in searing hot tar & then light the human torches on fire for garden parties in Imperial Rome... Y'know, brutal stuff. Unfortunately, the Church seems to respond backwards to violent oppression & instead of backing down, it tends to regroup & redouble its resolve.

Now, Satan being aware of this peculiarity, decided to let the church grow in power and in popular acceptance—so much so, that the Church became the de facto world (aka "European") government for something like a thousand years, and because of this, the Western world has adopted much of Christianity's values and morals: justice, peace, freedom, equality and the like. Needless to say, such concepts are very good, and from out of this universal adoption and the overwhelming extent of Christianity's presence in western culture, the Church began to adopt the mentality of being popular.

Because of Christianity's prevalence, even a generation ago, one was considered to be a "good person" if one went to church—whether or not one believed anything that the Bible taught. Heck, many of my friends' parents decided to go to church so that their kids (my friends) would be exposed to Sunday School teaching—and not because the family thought it important for the children to learn about the Bible, but because it was the "proper" thing to do with your children. Unfortunately, here starts the discussion of dilution.

The significant cultural impact that Christianity has had on western society has resulted in populating church buildings with people who really don't give a crap about Christianity at all—from the guy/girl who's "proclaiming the word of the Lord" at the front to the guy or girl in the nice clothes sitting towards the back, pretending to listen while they're actually wondering who America's next top model will be. Christianity has (or maybe even "had") become "nice," and as a result, the Church as a western whole has begun to shift from maintaining spiritual potency towards maintaining cultural popularity.

A High Risk Investment

Consider this: you have the opportunity to make an investment that would potentially change your life, lifting you up out of your current situation & placing you into a plush, prestigious lifestyle. An existence of meaning, wealth, authority and power. The payout to this investment has the potential to give you pretty much everything you've ever wanted. Of course, there's the catch. What does this investment cost?

To buy into the investment portfolio costs a near mint. Depending on who you are, it'll cost every pay check of every hour of every day that you work and on top of that, it requires that you put in time "off the clock" to ensure that the investment is maintained. Pretty expensive; pretty demanding. Yet, a few years of just grinning & bearing it would be worth the payout, I’d say--if the level of risk on the investment were pretty manageable. Then, there's the catch again.

This investment I'm talking about is one of the highest risk investments that anyone could even imagine: to date, there's only ever been one confirmed payout. We're talking hundreds of people buying in here, and only one has reported hitting the ROI--Return on Investment--threshold. He, of course, is smiling all the way to the bank & then some. Actually, we're talking about a potential investors' group of over a billion people, every one possibly cashing in on this chance of a lifetime. Sound far-fetched? It ain't. It's just a different perspective.

A high-risk investment has been placed before you. It'll cost pretty much everything you have & leave you in debt up to your ears until you reach the payout point. When you start making a return on the investment, though, you're laughing cuz you officially have it made for the rest of your life--call it "early retirement" with none of the downsides & all of the perks. It just costs two arms and two legs. It requires an all or nothing decision simply because the investment buy-in price is just that high (though, estimates peg this price to be much less than even 0.01% of the payout).

The portfolio management guarantees such high-yield returns to be a 100% possibility, and they also guarantee that the maturity time for the ROI won't leave you six-feet under before it occurs: you will profit immensely from this investment & have all the time in the world to enjoy its fruits. Guaranteed.

Because of this guarantee and the buy-in cost, it's an all-or-nothing deal. If you choose to invest, you must commit to the full investment price: any later choice to back out will result in termination of the agreement with no refunds or exchanges (though this investment does allow anyone to buy-in again, though the cost remains the same).

So what is this crazy expensive (but with even more crazy returns) investment? And where can you buy in? Who manages the portfolio? Well, it's believing that Christ is the son of God, and that he died on the cross to pay for our screw-ups while coming back to life three days later in victory over death. The payout on such a belief is not only eternal life, but eternal life living as rulers and co-heirs with Jesus over all of the universe, having been invested with the power of God Himself. Reigning forever as the third highest authority in the universe (and perhaps even beyond) seems like a pretty sweet deal.

The cost, however, is looking like a retard in this life: foregoing selfishness and some carnal pleasures. Taking the heat from people who think that God, Jesus & the whole shebang is outright foolishness. Upholding the name of Christ even to the point of death. Ultimate fidelity at any cost for the duration of your stay on this planet in this universe in that body of yours. Don't worry: you eventually get a new one. A body designed to wield the power of God much more effectively and much more easily. One not prone to falling apart of breaking: a perfect body, as it were.

It's true that there has only been one confirmed payout. That was Jesus, a couple of thousand years ago. And what if it's all a pipe dream, a big hoax, empty drivel--the opiate of the masses?

If it is, then I'm a huge effing retard. If Christ and his message to mankind was one big lie, then I have wasted my life and missed out on countless opportunities. If this around us is all there is, and if I have hoped in Christ for this life only, then, "we are of all men most to be pitied" (I Cor 15:19).

I've bought in; I'm not turning back. I've placed my bets on this investment. Laugh at me if you will. Or, would you like to be in on this awesome deal too? The choice is yours & the outcome is no one's fault but your own. So: are you in or are you out?

BlogPsalm 5

Lord, you are beautiful: there is none like you.
Your majesty encompasses the universe
Your glory encircles time.

Because of your goodness, I will praise you.
Because of your grace, I lift my voice.
You do not let the weak or feeble-hearted be devoured.

Your face shines upon the lowly;
Your arms embrace the mourning ones:
You never turn your gaze away.

Because of your goodness, I will praise you.
Because of your grace, I lift my voice.
I will sing of my Lord's unchanging love!

Who is there like the Lord?
He issues love and grace to all who come.
He satisfies the righteous
And pours out peace to those who rest in Him.

I will magnify you, Oh my God!
I exult in Your majesty.
I will raise my voice over all the earth
And glorify your name.

Because of your goodness, I will praise you.
Because of your grace, I lift my voice.
Your heart's my song and my soul's very breath:
Let my lips bring forth your praise.

Find more BlogPsalms here.

Peter Worse than Judas

It's the Easter weekend, the time when the Christian World remembers and celebrates the crucifixion, death and return to life of Jesus Christ, self-proclaimed son of God & universal scapegoat for the world's evil.

A couple thousand years ago, JC & eleven of his closest buddies went on a night hike through the Kidron River’s ravine, which marked the outskirts of Jerusalem. Crossing to the other side, they stopped for a bit in a clearing & hung out. It being well past bedtime, some of the guys dozed off while Jesus and three of his tightest homies went a couple of metres away from the other 8 to talk & pray. No one really knows who it was, but one of the hikers noticed a glimmer of some lights coming up the hillside towards them. Jesus knew what this was about & how it was going to pan out. He probably sighed with more than just a bit of expectant anxiety as those glints of flame from the torches and lanterns weaved their way up the hillside towards his posse. Light mixed with sound as marching footsteps mingled with the rustling & shuffling of others' ambling: the cops were coming.

Face off: a dozen night hikers groggy with sleep, aroused by the unexpected company of both Roman soldiers and Jewish temple officers, gathered together wondering what was about to happen. They realised that something big was coming, but they really didn't know what. A couple of days ago, when Jesus & his gang had returned to Jerusalem, the whole city threw a party... Jews hated Roman oppression, and Jesus was a contender in setting the nation of Israel free from the Empire. Did these "Roman" soldiers here defect, wanting to see freedom to their own nation? Was an uprising about to start, ushering in a new era of world order? There were many questions, I'm sure. I mean, Jesus had claimed that he'd come to set the people free... Maybe, though, the Romans caught wind of this and wanted to nip it in the butt, before all hell broke loose in the tiny, Mediterranean province.

"We're looking for Jesus of Nazareth," one of the newcomers proclaimed. Jesus steps forward and says, "I am him."

Then something that none of the hikers would have expected happened: One of their own, the only guy who opted out of the hike, appeared from among the throng of soldiers and officials. He walks quickly up to Jesus with a glimmer of what could be joy in his eyes, gives JC a huge hug while saying, "Teach! How've you been?" He seems so excited to see Jesus again that his kisses the hikers' leader on the cheek.

With a sorrowful smile, Jesus hugs his follower back, looks him in the eye and says, "Friend, do what you came here for."

Everyone there can see that the respected teacher is fighting back tears. Judas, the latecomer, realises that his master knows. His eyes widen in guilt and remorse as he stumbles away. The other 11 guys are still a bit confused as to what's going on, but one of the Jewish officers makes it very clear. "Seize him!" the order is shouted.

So, now things get hairy. The hikers had brought along with them a pair of machetes, and when the Jewish officers begin to approach and apprehend Jesus, Peter grabs one of the blades and, in blind fervour, screams a war cry while swinging the blade at one of the officers' head. Thankfully for the officer, Peter's no soldier, and when he sees Pete attempting to decapitate him, he dodges just in time--but not fast enough to avoid the blade completely. Malchus, the officer, lets out a shriek and clutches the huge gash on the side of his head. Blood is pouring everywhere and Malchus stares at the ground in horror, fixated on something in the dirt while shouting repeatedly, "My ear! My ear!"

Jesus turns to Peter, "Put the sword away!" he orders. "Have you already forgotten who I am, Pete?! Don't you know that with a mere snap of my fingers, I could summon 20,000 angelic warriors if I wanted to, or do you really think that I'm that helpless? My Father's given me a mission with express orders: shall I not carry it out?" His words silence the would-be brawl. The eleven hikers are terrified: history has told them than those who claimed to be saviours of Israel met with ill ends when they fell into the hands of Rome. Not only, though, did the master die, but all of his followers were executed as well...

As if reading their minds, Jesus addresses the lynch mob, "I'm the one you're here for. Let the rest of these guys go free." The deal is settled. Jesus is bound and carried away while his buddies run for their lives.

Two of his friends, though, decide to follow the lynch mob at a distance: Peter, the would-be murderer, and one other (I'm assuming it's John, though it could have been Judas). The soldiers take Jesus to the priestly mansion, where JC begins his journey through many mock trials. John/Judas knows the judge & gets into the mansion easily. He sends word to the gatehouse that Peter should be allowed in as well. The guard, upon hearing Peter's description, asks whether or not Pete's one of Jesus' followers. "Hell no! Are you on crack?!" he responds, afraid that if he gets associated with Jesus, his fate would be similar (although, not more than an hour or so earlier, this very same guy tried to kill somebody for laying a hand on his teacher... Odd, no?) The guard rolls her eyes and lets him into the courtyard.

Peter warms himself by a fire, as it's about 3 AM on some day early in spring. He tries to hide his face as best as he can, but the light from the fire doesn't help his stealth. Jesus had been a regular celebrity in Jerusalem up until this night, and one of the people around the fire recognised Peter. "Hey, you're one of Jesus' followers, aren't you!"

Peter scoffs at such a claim, "Yeah, sure I am. Just like that guy there's King Herod's son!"

One of the guys, however, who was with the lynch mob, hears this as he's walking by. "Hey!" he shouts to Peter, "You! I know you! You were there: You're the guy who cut off my cousin's ear tonight, aren't you?!"

"What the heck are you smoking, buddy?" Peter replies, "Do you think that, if I were the guy you think I am, I'd be stupid enough to come to the courthouse right after I apparently attempted to murder a court official? C'mon! Where's the sense in that? Moron."

A rooster crows somewhere in the courtyard.

* * * * *

I think that people give Judas far too bad of a rep than he deserves, and that Peter's painted far too brightly as well. I mean, c'mon! Look at the situation. It's Israel in the middle of Roman oppression. People are tired of having the dark Empire sucking up all their freedoms and opposing martial law over everything that they do. Over the past few decades (If I remember my history correctly), rebellion after rebellion occurred in Judea, initiated both by groups and by men who eagerly desired to throw off the yoke of Rome. Some even claim to be the prophesied Messiah, or saviour & coming king. All of them, however, fail.

Then Jesus comes along. He does things differently. Instead of waging war and suicide bombings at the get-go, he begins to raise a groundswell of popular support. He brings the populace onto his side so much so that the entire capital city holds a parade / celebration at his arrival for Passover. Everybody (almost) loves this guy... And with major popular support, you can only imagine that once this guy calls for rebellion, a huge number of citizens will enlist in his movement against tyrannical Rome.

Judas was a thinker, I'm pretty sure. He knew that this was going on & he knew that the powers that be weren't very fond of Jesus. Combining this with the history and popular image of what the "Messiah" would be like--a conquering hero--I bet that Judas had complete confidence that Jesus was the One, the real deal. Because of this, I'd bet that Judas never even entertained the idea that Jesus would go willingly into captivity. I bet that Judas' thoughts were that Jesus just needed a little push--some encouragement in the right direction to strike the government and start saving Israel from Rome. "He's the One: nothing could possibly go wrong." Then Jesus went with the guards to court--uh oh. "Maybe he wants to be in a more public place to gather support from the population?" No doubt, there were people at the trial of Jesus who were waiting for him to just say the word, and they'd bring the government down with whatever force was needed. But he didn't.

They shipped him to Pilate, the Roman governor. "Maybe there he'll incite the rebellion, officially spitting in Rome's face." Again, nothing.

I bet that this is where Judas got a very sick feeling in his stomach, and where he fully comprehended what Jesus told him on the hillside of the Kidron valley. Jesus wasn't going to topple Rome. He didn't have any intentions of dong so. Ever. At this point, I can only imagine the string of four-letter words coming from Judas' mouth--not to mention the vomit from realising that he was responsible for handing his teacher, master & friend right into the hands of their enemies. If you were him, d'ya think you would entertain the thought of suicide? That's what I figured...

Then, there's Peter. 150% talk at supper that night. "I'll stick by your side even to death, Jesus!" He said. Some guy tries to arrest Jesus & Pete tries to decapitate him, forgetting all the instruction of peace, love and brotherly kindness that Jesus had been pounding into his head over the past several years. No one aims to cut off someone's ear with a sword. It was the outcome of unskilled fighting. Peter was trying to kill someone, probably out of rage. Peter was doing what Judas had expected Jesus to want and to do. Peter was starting a physical, violent rebellion. Jesus had no intention of following through on that, and instead chastised Peter for his actions.

If it was both Judas and Peter who went to Jesus' trial, it would make the most sense (either that, or it was John & Peter). Judas would have had to have known the high priest's family--how else would he have negotiated the deal to hand Jesus over? Judas got in based on his association with Christ. Peter vehemently denied that same association. Not once, not twice, but three times. And all of this less than 12 hours after he stood before all their friends and swore that he'd follow Jesus to the death, no matter what.

When Jesus told his followers that he'd have to suffer & die at the hands of the officials, Peter told him that that would never happen. What did Jesus say to Peter about this remark? "Get behind me, Satan." When Jesus & his buds were eating supper the same night he was going to be arrested, what did he say to Judas? "What you're about to do, do quickly." Jesus asked Judas to betray him. Jesus told Peter that his words wouldn't line up with his actions and that Peter as well would deny Christ. Except, Jesus didn't ask Peter to deny his association. Peter did this on his own.

Who's the worse disciple? And yet, Jesus chose to use Peter to be one of the foundational members of the early church after He returned to heaven. Nobody's too bad for Jesus to want as a friend.

Food for thought this Easter season.

Comp.LiT

Grab a Bible if you have one. Go to the back. Read 2 Peter; the whole book. Flip a few pages further. Read Jude. Pause. Notice anything? Let me know what you discover.

My Unhappy Place

A heart drips
Slow passion melts from a frosty core
Extremities flee
Barbarism reigns supreme


Can dogs bite birds long in flight?
Can trees sing when one strums upon their rings?
Does air move by the sighings of love?


In empty brokenness, the cup feels no fullness. Pour in, drizzle out. Pour in, drizzle drizzle.


Apertures provide access, but access provides emptiness, and in the end, an open vessel is an empty one.


Selfish desire makes one complete. Me first mentalities provide much, and often. You get what you want and you want what you have. Nothing lacks; fullness in place, satisfaction established.


What is the point of selflessness? What do you gain? Broken, emptiness. Void. Gaping longings. Dissatisfaction.


Which is better: pain and regret from satisfying those desires gone awry, or perpetual longing to have those desires filled? Which is more consuming and which is more destructive: regret or obsession, pain or emptiness?


Logic states that Jesus is on crack. Reason mandates the adoption of a hedonistic life. Service, humbleness, selflessness and compassion necessarily leave one empty and mangled. They make one unattractive, useless and rejected. There is no point in considering others to be more important when they already believe that they in fact are.


And here we have a contention: Christianity only works when Christians follow Christ. A life of love and communal support will be squashed, trampled and smeared across glass and gravel by any soul who adopts a selfish stance.


Christianity is a pipe dream because people are selfish assholes. Christian community will never truly exist when individuals extort and abuse for personal gain.


So why bother? What is the point? Why care about people who don't recognise that you even exist unless you're stroking their social egos? Why provide love and support to any soul who is bent solely upon consuming--never reciprocating? Where is the justification, where is the reasoning, what is the purpose?


...



<insert long string of expletives here>

My Last Week

The snow has melted for most of this past week. There still remain fair chunks of the mottled white stuff, though, strewn about or heaped into weathering mounds, reminiscent of white chocolate Hershey's kisses meeting their ill-gotten fates on some car's dashboard as it sits, windows up, in the middle of the summer's heat. The past few days have caught me reminiscing, looking back & being flooded with memories of my tree planting days of yore. Perhaps it's due to the combination of being in a small city with piles of dirty crew-cab trucks, filled with dirty crewmen looking exhausted even though the morning's light has just begun to make its ascent. Perhaps there is another reason, maybe like my green MEC backpack, which I used as a "home" whilst on the cut blocks, which still remains faithfully at my side. The duct tape scrap that I had casually thrown on my bag one day in the summer of 2002 finally came off about a year ago, but my bag refuses to forget that scrap's presence: a ghostly white patch of long-spent duct tape adhesive heralds the tape's former position, and every once in a while, it causes me to think about those "blissful" 11 hour work days in +35°C heat...

This is my last week sojourning in Lloydminster. I will be leaving in 6 days, having learned a pile about my new job and also about life in general. It always strikes me as odd, how some of the necessities of "the grind" seem to translate into excellent insight for greater life. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as it usually turns out this way--learning always tends to bleed outside its intended perimeter.

I've come to a newer appreciation of how the church, as an organisation, has been structured by Jesus Christ through my management training here. The company for whom I work has a philosophy of empowering every associate that they've hired. Regardless of whether you're a 14-year old part-time stock person, or an inventory control specialist with a 10-year running career, my company gives each member of the team a certain level of authority to act autonomously and make choices independent of their supervisors. The reasoning behind such a philosophy is that the big wigs recognise: a.) that supervisors and management can never be everywhere at once, and b.) that, for the most part, the people we hire aren't dunces. In fact, the people who are typically the best informed at making many of the decisions arising from spontaneous interaction between customer and company tend to be those in lower positions (they typically are the ones with whom the customer interacts, and therefore are the ones who have personally witnessed most of the necessary information surrounding the pending decision). Since these associates are intimately involved in the case-by-case customer interactions, our company has decided to give them a level of authority allowing them to deal appropriately in such situations. This relieves the amount of tedious decisions needed to be made by management, makes the customer happy by speeding up decision turnaround and give our associates a feeling of ownership in the company. It works very well.

As a manager of a larger compliment of staff, with a relatively large footprint and having a high level of customer interaction, a lot of activity goes on around the store without management being able to physically oversee or even surveil much of the daily operations, we count on our staff to be our eyes and ears. Granted, we can query a million reports of how business is doing at the Point of Sale, but any customer activity before this process can go undetected. How is management going to know if many customers are inquiring about specific product features that none of our current stock provides, unless each customer interaction has been reviewed by management? What about theft, or short-stocked items? As management, our greatest resource is our staff. They provide information, deliver productivity and create the customer experience. As members of the team, our staff act as the eyes, ears, hands and feet of the management team as far as storefront daily operations go.

Now, I don't think that Jesus/God/HS actually need anyone to be their hands, feet, eyes or ears. They seem to be pretty good at doing what He wants to do, what with being omnipotent, omniscient and omniscient. In fact, both Paul and John prophesy that Christ will indeed reveal Himself to the whole world in His full glory, proclaiming His truth to all mankind without any help from those who choose to follow Him. Instead, though, it seems to be that the organisation of the Church as it was designed seems to focus more on ourselves and upon a communal relationship with the Lord. If God did everything for Himself, where would we fit in to the picture? What would be our purpose and what would we do with ourselves? Furthermore, how would we grow in relationship both with Him and with others, if God didn't ask us to interact with others on His behalf? How would we ourselves grow and develop in competency, authority and confidence if we weren't given an opportunity to flex such muscles for His Name? One of the underlying motives of my company giving authority to every member of our staff is that, by doing so, we foster growth and development in responsibility and management from the get-go. You don't gain experience by sitting around having your superiors doing all the hard things for ya. You need to extend beyond your current position and assume the position of a higher level of authority (as far as you're permitted, of course) in order to find out how such higher things are done effectively.

Such is it with the Church and why Christ chose to call us His Body in this interim, before He returns. Because He purposefully has chosen to step back for a bit, He has given us the authority and space to learn, to grow and to become more like Him. With this Divinely sanctioned independence in hand, how are you going to respond? Will you continue to ask how to undertake every single menial task, or will you go out on a limb & try stuff, knowing that there is a possibility of failing (but also knowing that your Boss is able to fix any "mistake" that you might make, and turn it around to become a positive experience eventually)? Will you sit on your thumbs waiting for your Boss to do the things He's asked you to do, knowing that He's able to do them Himself and doesn't really need your help at all? Or will you test the waters, stretch yourself, go out on that limb and act in a capacity, in a level of authority that is technically beyond your given position, where failure is possible, where growth is inevitable, and where trust and reliance in your Boss' estimation of your ability may take you to places you never thought you'd ever be able to go?


Responsibility. Authority. Power. Challenge. Reliance. Trust. The position's been offered--will you take it?

All the World's a Septic Tank!

Leafing through my weekly newsletter from NewScientist Magazine, I managed to stumble across this little tacked-on story. Seismologists (I believe) have discovered what appears to be a huge water well underneath China, whose reserves are speculated to hold as much water as the Arctic Ocean. Pretty neat, I'd say. If they end up finding more (or deciding that it's frozen on land at the poles), there may be a geological explanation as to where all the water from the "flood" went...

Jesus as Wife / Jesus as Life

I have been doing a lot of thinking over the past week & a bit. It's an easy thing to get into doing, when you find yourself cooped up in a hotel room, with nothing but a "policies & procedures" manual to distract you, Quite nice, actually. Thinking is fun; synthesising information is great. Making sense of contradictions is rewarding.

I have discovered lately, that I am largely a contradiction.

In my heart and foundational to my soul is the belief and desire to know God, love Him completely and to serve Him without reservation. On the contrary, I find that in my day to day reality, such statements hardly surface into existence. It is sad. I don't really like this, and since I have identified a contradiction in my beliefs & actions, I am seeking to rectify this disparity.

The very nice thing about having a University education in the dramatic arts is that one learns boatloads about examining motivations and action. These two concepts are irrevocably linked, and by studying one, you can usually uncover the other. Where there exists a conflict between two or more motivations (or desires), character is born, and the ultimate choice of which motivation prevails over the other(s) reveals who a person truly is.


I have been thinking a lot about love and a lot about authority, since the two biggest uses of my time right now are work & God. At work, I am training to become a retail store manager, which entails a whole pile of administration and interpersonal leadership. With God, my desire is to know Him & love Him more--in everything that I do. As a result, I've come up with some interesting discoveries about who I am and how I should be living because of it.

So, I say that I love God. Every good Christian makes that claim. However, how much do I love God, and how important is God (and my love for Him) to me? I made some depressing discoveries, when I compared how I would treat my future wife in comparison with how I treat God.

Consider this: if Jesus were your wife or husband, would you treat Him the same way as you treat Him now?

If someone used your spouse's name as an object of slander, would you let it slide?
If someone made fun of your husband or wife, would you sit back and smile?
If you knew that people hated your spouse, would that cause you to try to hide the fact that you are married to him/her?
Would you be ashamed of your spouse, or would you try to minimise the amount of people who knew that you eagerly desire to spend time with him/her?
Would you knowingly & willingly do something that benefits or pleases you, but that greatly upsets your husband/wife?

or...

Would you parade around the fact that you are madly in love with your spouse to everyone around, regardless of their opinions?
Would you make every effort to introduce your friends & associates to the love of your life?
Would you sing your husband/wife's praises to everybody around?
Would you defend your spouse's honour, regardless of the cost?
Would you choose to forego personal pleasure or gain to honour and uplift your spouse?

It's got me thinking. And I've been thinking about it a lot. I must confess that up until I actually stopped to think about it, I never realised how little I express my love for God. I typically have tried to minimise the amount of people in my daily life who know that I am associated with Christ, so that my daily life would go more smoothely. In the past, on more than one occasion, I have received both physical assault and verbal abuse because of my allegiance to Jesus Christ. Such experiences strongly effected me, and I've since sought make my life easier and less pain-wrought by not announcing to all around that I belong to Christ. As a result, I would let people who abuse His name do so without so much as blinking at such slights. I've graciously smiled when people have made fun of my Lord, so as not to cause a disturbance. I've let people disparage my God and His actions/character freely without so much as even trying to voice the fact that I have been largely offended.

Jesus has been my secret lover, my forbidden joy, my hidden hope. This is not acceptable. Why? Well, the implications here are that my love for God come second to my pesonal comfort, security and safety. I would rather sit easily by as Jesus becomes an object of slander, ridicule and deprecation. No, not good. Unacceptable. If I would consider such reticence to be a glaring atrocity in a marriage relationship, how, then, am I able to rationalise it within my relationship to God? I cannot. I will not. I would never treat my wife with such unsavoury disrespect, and I would rebuke anyone who did; how, then, can I treat Jesus in such a manner? I can not. I will not. No longer. A change is mandated, a stand is called for, and rectification in in order.

My claim and my expressed cental motivation is to love the Lord my God with all my heart, strength, soul and mind. If this is so, then my actions must reflect such motivation. The heirarchy of what drives me to do things must be shaken. Personal comfort and selfish desire be damned. It is Christ's entitlement to rule. I love Him dearly, moreso than any woman I could ever meet, and therefore, He deserves greater respect, love and honour than the She I hope to marry. If I would not sit back and allow my wife to be dishonoured, disrespected and slandered; if I wouldn't blatantly dishonour my own wife for personal gain or satisfaction, how much more then, should I do likewise for Jesus Christ, my first love, the saviour of all I am?

Today, I stand. Never again shall I back down; and if by chance I do, someone please kick me in the head.

Textual Catharsis

Meandering thoughts on a Mid-winter's Day:

Faith flight fire frivolity
Fluorescent flowing floorspace

Crack snapple creek end ebb
Warm wax waning wistfully wherever worlds wander.
Pickled onions stew strongly under elephantine ovaltine.
A boxer plays with stones.
Will Will's will will Will whatever Will will will? Read Red's red reed.
Quivering kiwis quail quietly in the quays while cowering Krauts consume cooled coloured cabbage.

Where goes sanity, and where goes reason? What is the path of insight, inspired conscious thought?
Can creation keep creativity creative, or will all things run the circuit of entropy? Is the universe doomed to equilibrium?

Fifty five fly flies fly flyly forward from forty flatulating frogs. Do frogs flatulate? What breaks wind better than a forest? Why is the sky pink nigh nighttime and patterned after diminishing returns? Is there any really real ROE?

Flexing flaccid muscle makes many manly men more mourning-mindful, mandating much meaty meals, mulling meagerly masticating molars.

Sip a little tea. Then take a little pea. Sit beside the sea and watch a tiny bee.

Bumble bee, bumble bee: how do you fly? A torso so bulging with wings perched so high.
Fluid dynamics condemn your flight motion. Science is puzzled with you and emotion.
Fly away, fly away, fly away home. Lest the world's oddest wonders be someday full-known.

...God is Backwards

Whenever I read the historical texts in the Bible, I become more and more amazed at how completely bizarre God is in choosing the people He wants to use as His servants. Often, the choice seems random and usually, His callings seem completely counter-intuitive.

Why in the world would God have chosen Moses to lead the nation if Israel out of Egypt? To start off, Moses was the adopted child of Pharaoh's household--the last person one would think would remove the nation's greatest labour force. Then, this royal figure goes and murders of of his officials in broad daylight. He runs away & lives in the desert for forty years, seemingly trying to leave his past behind him. Then, lo and behold, God tells him to go back & remove the Israelites from Egypt. Moses refuses several times (and, with good reason, especially if you ignore that it is God who's telling him to go & do this. Were it anyone else, the reluctance seems very justifiable), but he eventually goes, being met with opposition from both the nation of Israel and the nation of Egypt. However, in the end, God's choice proves to be a good one. Moses "comes into his own," and becomes Israel's most prominent leader, through relying on the Lord.

And what about Samson? The guy's selected from birth to be set apart for God and is commanded to never cut his hair, never be in the presence of a carcass and to never eat/drink anything that "comes from the vine." Throughout his life, however, the records state the not only does Samson repeatedly use dead animals as weapons, but he also eats honey out of a rotting lion carcass. He constantly parties, imbibing in many delights from "the vine," assumedly. And it is only when he gets his hair cut that the Lord removes his supernatural strength (though, Samson's strength returns to him later on after his capture, just in time to destroy over 10,000 of Israel's enemies and himself in one last act of zeal.).

Those examples are all commonly known, even though we often gloss over them. But take this one on for size: Saul, the first anointed king of Israel is a direct descendent of the inhabitants of Gibeah, from the tribe of Benjamin. What the heck?! Doesn’t sound very important or striking unless you've just finished reading the book of Judges (or if you're a meticulous tracker of Biblical history/lineages).

Here's the deal: Back in the day, after the time Samson judged Israel (potentially during the judgeship of Eli, the High Priest who reared Samuel, Israel's last judge), there was a Levite who was travelling through Israel on his way home in Bethlehem with his wife. He stays the night in Gibeah, since he had left late in the afternoon and it was getting dark. No one in Gibeah offered to provide him lodging (as was the usual custom in Israel), so he ended up staying in the square until an Ephraimite returned to the city & offered this traveller a place to stay in his own house. However, when the men of Gibeah got word that there was fresh blood in town, they banged on the Ephraimite's door, demanding that the Levite come out of the house, so that every man in town could have sex with him (sounds a lot like what happened to the messengers of God staying with Lot in Sodom, no?). The Ephraimite man chastised the men of Gibeah, telling them that such an act was unwholesome and rude, however the men of Gibeah kept pressing for sexual relations. Eventually, the people inside the house relented (fearing for all of their lives, no doubt), and they made a proposal: if the men of Gibeah were dead set on having sex with someone in that house, the least they could do is have sex with a woman. The mob outside capitulated and forced the Levite's wife to come outside, where every man in the city continually raped her until the morning, when she was returned to the house's doorstep, dead.

The Levite doesn't take too kindly to this abhorrent act, and calls the whole nation of Israel to do something about it. In response, the nation musters its entire military intent on purging this wickedness from amongst their people by killing every person from Gibeah. Unfortunately, the entire tribe of Benjamin decides to defend its city, Gibeah, and as a result, 11 tribes of Israel attack one. Heavy losses on both sides, but 11 eventually beats one. In the end, the nation of Israel completes its ethnic cleansing, leaving only 700 survivors from the line of Benjamin--all of them male.

What does this have to do with Saul? Well, Saul is a Benjamite, and everyone in his father's house is a direct descendent of those from Gibeah. Yep: Saul's grandpa is a guy who wanted to have sex with a man from the priestly order, but who decided instead to rape the same Levite's wife until she died. If you were a Jew, and God had told you that such a man would become your king, how do you think you'd react? It's no wonder that there was some grumbling among the nation of Israel when Samuel proclaimed Saul as the nation's regent. It's also no wonder that Saul thought Samuel was out of his mind when he was told that he'd become king. Again, it's no wonder that Saul was hiding amongst the baggage when Samuel pronounced Saul's kingship to the whole nation.

It’s funny that way. People & society often tend to have a collective moral conscience that typically shuns leaders whose lineage reveals horrific &/or detestable acts. Yet, God—in His infinite wisdom—chose to use such individuals to glorify His name. When we turn to the New Testament, we see a similar trend as Jesus invites tax collectors to be his followers. Even Jesus Himself was a self-proclaimed Rabbi, though by formal instruction, he was a carpenter (how many rig pigs do you know & trust to teach you the finer points of atomic electronegativity?). And to forerun the theological foundation of the Church after Christ’s departure, God chooses Christianity’s most ferocious opponent: Saul of Tarsus. Kinda makes you think (at least it does, me)… Almost appears to be that God doesn’t give a crap what society says should happen. He chooses & says what (or whom) He wants to choose/say. And He is always vindicated in His choices.

So, next time you think that God has made a serious mistake in what He’s done or said, consider Moses; consider Samson; consider Saul. God has His reasons, and He never screws up. He may not make sense from where we see things, but His reasons always prove best.