Wound

After exiting a room where I sat
for too long and wrote about writers
for too long, the fruition of my sitting and reading
what writers wrote about what writers wrote
for too long, I stood still for a split second-
just long enough to breath-
and conclude that it has been too long.

The falling of string
led by the weight of the unwinding ball
as my lungs unravel the wind.

Blood and Love

I believe that in the body, unity matters more than anything else.

Who cares if your liver is perfect?
I don't care if your liver is perfect.
If you don't have the vessels connecting it to everything else,
enabling you to be a liver-
you're a deader.

Many people argue that the heart is the most important organ because without it we can't survive. Well, without vessels, a heart's effort is worthless.

I believe there is a heart and it is pumping. Our veins and arteries have been clotted with people who can't fully be anywhere because they are kind of everywhere like blood cells who spend all their time in the vessels because they can't associate themselves with any one organ because they all seem to have good and bad qualities and we're afraid to commit to anything that might make us appear to be something we're not bla bla bla I won't go to church because... It's time the love flowed like blood and the organs acted like they exist for the organism. The Church is who you are. The churches must become pieces of the Church by fully committing to their roles as parts and not wholes. People, commit to an organ knowing that without it the organism will not survive.

Church, we are not dead. We are not dying. But like my legs after math class, we have been sitting too still for too long to feel anything but an uncomfortable tingling where our limbs used to be.
Let's make an effort to let the blood flow. Let's not let the heart's hard work go to waste.

This is a message advocating unity because I believe it is Jesus' greatest concern for his body. When he prayed to his father, the most intimate relationship ever had, he revealed the deepest genuine concern of his heart. Read John 17 with the truth about it in mind: Jesus was close to death and asking for what he wanted most. I believe that what he prayed is the articulation of the will of God because the prayer was indeed God commissioning God. Therefore it will be done. (Period) Let's join the commission by joining the cells that are our lives to line the walls of vessels for love like blood to use for the invasion of organs, enabling a functioning organism to awake from its sleep and wash the feet of the world.

They will know we are Christians by his blood.

Birds Seek

Blue jays on blue days
swoop in and steal.
Eagles, bald and regal
dive in and kill.
Humming birds flit into flowers
sweet sugar they suck.
And the masses find feeders
thanks to luck.

None of them sow
and none of them reap.
Each has plenty of food
and its own way to seek.

None of them sit
on a wooden bench,
expecting their food
in portions of pinch-
well except those chicks
who are stuck in the twiggy nest.

They can hope for vomit at best.

I think we'd get to know him

The summer before sixth grade I started hanging out with a kid who was going into eighth grade. He was an amazing skateboarder and I looked up to him in many ways. We skated together most of the summer days and he was deeply invested in teaching me how to skate like he did. I was pretty touched and felt wanted. To me, we were best friends and I was cool because of it.

The catch comes with school hours. The first time I saw him at school I sprinted through a thick crowd of people, pushing and elbowing my way towards my idol. When I got to he and his friends and excitedly asked him what was up, he looked at me, turned to his friends and shrugged his shoulders saying, "I don't know who this kid is." They all smirked and walked away, leaving me crushed and alone in a violent sea of pre-pubescent drama. I was ready to quit everything.

This week I had the privilege of serving communion to and praying with a black-skinned, blue-eyed, mute, crippled, homeless man named Johnny. As our eyes met my heart broke because I was looking into the eyes of Jesus Christ. He was hungry, abandoned, and without the means to meet these needs. I was moved for obvious reasons but the one I want to discuss is related to the conviction I was graciously handed.

In that moment I realized that I had been singing songs to the same Jesus and praising him daily. I had been telling him that my will is less important to me than his. I had been telling him that what he needs me to do is what I want to do. But I had not been staring him face to face and meeting the needs I found there. I had not been taking seriously the invitation he gave at the end of Matthew 25. You see, Matthew 25 is not a list of requisites for salvation. It is a cheat sheet for those who are desperate to see and love Jesus.
He says, "So you want to know me? You want to serve me? This is where I'll be: Where there is hunger, where there is thirst, where there are those who don't fit in, where there is nakedness, where there is sickness, and where there is imprisonment or slavery. Meet me there!"

How beautiful would it be if I wanted to know Christ and the power of his love bad enough that I looked where he said to find it! Let us seek him in each other. Let's find him in our brokenness.

When we sing to and praise God in the building and then when we leave, look him in the eyes and tell our friends we don't know him, it must be confusing for him. We could talk about hypocrisy all day long, but there's no intimacy there. Why don't we just strive to achieve a consistency with our lives.

Let's say to him in song, "You are holy!" and then say to him in passing, "You are holy!"

Let's say to him in prayer, "Your will be done with my life." and then say to him in passing, "What do you need?"

I think we'll get to know him. I am.

We're buckets.

We are not made great by we know. We are made great by what we learn.

The struggle of life and reconciliation>the comfort of being right.

One requires trust in and submission to something greater, the other requires the pursuit of all things submitting to you. Let's allow our lives to be raw, with many tears and many more shoulders to cry on. If we are unwilling to experience the reality of the pain, we miss out on the reality of the joy. What I mean is that if we use a small bucket to scoop sand, it is the same bucket with which we scoop water. Let your bucket grow by becoming vulnerable to good and bad things, which is made possible through the realization that the Lord is sovereign and can be trusted. Vulnerability is not a part time job.

Let the pain Jesus scooped show you the size of his bucket. His capacity for holding water is sufficient for us all. The good news is that he doesn't hold it for long. He's in the business of pouring what he has over ALL peoples.

Stop knowing so much and start learning. What are you so afraid of?

God is the giver.

It has become very clear to me that only God can reveal himself.
We can say all of the right things, do all of the right things, think all of the right things, own all of the right things, read the whole bible, read thick theological books, etcetera, but none of these will reveal God until God choses to reveal himself through them.

Everything is here so he can use it to reveal himself. We're like paints for a painter and notes for a musician. My recent revelations have been things I already knew. Things I've read, heard, thought of, and even taught. Nothing is here now that wasn't before, but veils are being removed, and nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same.

God never changes, but he changes us so we may better see him. This is freedom. There's no need to worry anymore.  What I mean is that my role in your life and yours in mine is not about being God. It's about letting God be us. Let him do things in and through us- mysterious and invisible things that can only be seen by those who's eyes he opens in that moment. In other words, it's not my job to change you (unless, of course, you are an infant with a diaper full of nasty.) or yours to change me (I will have you know that I am a big boy now and can change my own diapers, thank you very much.) As many have said, embrace the blasphemy and let God be man.

I can teach you how to learn about who God is by exploring him myself and sharing with you what I've learned, but I can't teach you who God is or isn't. If how right or wrong I am will never change who he is, then why would you let it?
Ask him to teach you who he is. He will. Maybe He'll use me.

In the meantime, I guess I'll try and put what he teaches me into words. But as I've said, those are nothing but drops of paint and flat notes waiting to be painted and played. I've got nothing to offer you because he's the one who can give you things. I've got what he has given me to offer to him and he's taking it all with the smile of that weird creative guy who's up to something in the basement.
(Not George Clooney...Gross)
He's up to something and I think we should be excited about it. He sure seems to be.

Traditions

The other day I was playing with my buddy, Drew, when his mother told us to play quieter because the baby was asleep. So, being the four year old that he is, he turned to me and shooshed at the top of his lungs. Then he turned back around and began to "tip toe" across the kitchen floor. I put the action in quotes because he wasn't really tip toeing. He was violently stomping- on his toes- completely defeating the purpose of tip toeing.

It was adorable, but it also got me thinking about myself and other Christians. We constantly do stuff because we are "supposed to," but the way we do them makes  more racket than if we had just walked.

I believe in doing rituals and carrying on traditions. They work. But we shouldn't be doing things because "that's just what we do." When we act this way, we run the risk of stomping when we are supposed to be tip toeing because we don't truly understand the value tip toeing. Granted, Drew knows that he needs to be quiet, and he has very little practice doing so. Just as I know that I need to not think about myself when I'm preaching and have very little practice doing so. This is not an attack on style or skill.
This is an attack on knowing what tool "so and so" would use, but having no idea how or why.

Let's do these things, but let's know why we are doing them. It'd be a shame if communion became something that wasn't world changing. It'd be a shame if the Lord's prayer became an anthem rambled by many and sung by few. It'd be a shame if baptism had more to do with water or age than death and life. It'd be a shame if crosses became beautiful for any reason other than the fact that one led to life for the world. I'd hate to see people slander their brothers because of their style of tip toeing, stepping, dancing, sliding, or rolling across the kitchen floor.

Since when was it about traditions? I thought it was about joining Jesus Christ in loving the world.
Since when was it even about tip toeing? I thought it was about not waking up a baby.

We have mixed up our "hows" and "whys."